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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (19319)	11/25/2000 12:04:36 PM
From: Mannie	Respond to of 65232

Local retailers hope for strong sales Friday, November 24, 2000 By JIM MICHAELS SPECIAL TO THE P-I Nancy Breck issued her last order to the Toys R Us sales clerks at 6 a.m. Friday, right before the doors opened: "Smile." Seconds after her voice echoed over the intercom, the first wave of shoppers came down the aisles of the Northgate Mall store, wheeling carts and most heading with determined looks for a stack of portable scooters. Minutes later, many of the carts were piled high, other shoppers grappled with armloads of boxes and the lines at registers were 10 shoppers deep. Retailers call it Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday buying season. For retailers, this next month is critical, coming after a fairly slow last quarter and concerns that consumers will be tighter with their money in the face of volatile stock markets, high energy prices and dot-com failures. Retailers nationwide are banking on a combination of discounts and intense advertising to woo shoppers. They have a lot riding on the holiday season, which accounts for about 24 percent of average annual sales. For some, the percentage is much greater. Last year, Toys R Us Inc. got 42 percent of its sales and 80 percent of profit from November through December. Some gift shoppers didn't wait until yesterday to get going. Online retailers reported brisk traffic on Thanksgiving as Internet shopping entered its third full-blown holiday season. But the growth of online sales is slowing, with sales projections in December of $11.6 billion -- up from last year's $7 billion, according to Jupiter Research. "Christmas will be decent but not spectacular," predicted Kurt Barnard, publisher of Barnard's Retail Trend Report, based in Upper Montclair, N.J. "You won't see the binge buying you saw last year." Barnard and other analysts expect about a 3 percent to 4 percent sales increase at stores this holiday shopping season, compared with 7 percent last year. Sales figures from yesterday's shopping won't be available for some time, but Seattle-area merchants expected healthy sales, at least as good as last year's. Downtown stores hope to make up for the World Trade Organization protests last year that kept shoppers away. "We're just looking for a holiday season free of WTO," said Lynn Beck, marketing manager for Pacific Place mall. Crowds lined downtown streets to view the Bon Marche Christmas Parade yesterday morning. Many then headed into the stores to start their holiday shopping. Malls and department stores reported crowds of shoppers about on par with last year's opening of the holiday shopping season. "We're feeling pretty good," said Anne Marie Peacock, assistant marketing director for Bellevue Square. "People were here at 6:30 asking when the stores will open." Northgate officials said 90,000 shoppers came through the mall's doors yesterday. Many stores open early on the day after Thanksgiving. And Toys R Us felt like Ground Zero. There was a handful of people waiting outside before the 6 a.m. opening, but within an hour the aisles were packed and nine registers were operating continuously as the lines backed up. "All these people know what they're looking for," said clerk Erika Last as shoppers pushing carts whizzed by and headed for stacks of scooters, robotic dogs and other toys. "This is definitely bigger than the past few years," said Charles Bujan, the sales floor manager for Toys R Us at Northgate. "This is crazy," Stephanie Jossart said to no one in particular as she stood in an aisle as shoppers rushed by her. "I thought I'd come over real quick and beat the crowd . . . since they opened at 6. I guess that's not the case." This report includes information from The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.