Word: retailers
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Seasonally adjusted figures released by the Commerce Department on Friday show U.S. retail and food-services sales rose 0.3% from January and 3.9% from a year ago. If car and auto-part sales were excluded, the gain would be even bigger, 0.8% month-over-month and 4.2% year-over-year. (See 10 things to buy during the recession...
Bryan Eshelman, a managing director in the retail practice at AlixPartners, a global business advisory firm, says the retail recovery has a long road ahead. "We're still about $25 billion [in retailer sales] below the autumn 2007 peak on a seasonally adjusted basis," he says...
...week. In that report, owners posted a 4% year-over-year sales increase in February at stores they had owned at least a year, reversing the 4.7% decline posted during the same month a year earlier. Today's report casts a wider net, covering everything from mom-and-pop retail shops to car dealers, so the fact that it is similar to what big retailers were reporting says the February gains were broadly distributed - a positive sign for the economy...
Ellen Davis, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, says she started noticing a pickup in retail sales in January but believes economic indicators such as unemployment and the health of the stock market will play a major role in spending habits as the year progresses. "Jobs really is the biggest issue here," she says...
However, Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, is more bullish. He sees the February sales numbers as the beginning of a cyclical recovery. "I think the picture is overwhelmingly one of a retail recovery," he says. While he acknowledges that the sales increase is off weak 2009 numbers, he's nevertheless optimistic. "A broad retail recovery is in play," he contends. "There is a fair amount of pent-up demand ... and we're only seeing the beginning of that...