Mainstream media loves to report that retail sales were “down” for December, compared to last year. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Thanksgiving came a week earlier this year, meaning an extra weekend of Christmas shopping in NOVEMBER, and one less in DECEMBER…duh… Do the math! But of course, this ends up marginalized if mentioned at all… This from ShopperTrak Corp.
According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets, total sales rose 8.3 percent to about $10.3 billion on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, compared with $9.5 billion on the same day a year ago. ShopperTrak had expected an increase of no more than 4 percent to 5 percent.
In fact, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, intial holiday sales rose 3.6% over 2006. Not bad considering all the doom and gloom being reported around the nation.
January 17, 2008 at 8:09 pm |
It’s nice to hear something positive for a change!