Wednesday, 07 October 2009

• Holiday Forecrast: Grim, Yet Classic

  
  
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  The holiday shopping season is just around the corner, I've got good news and bad news. The bad: Consumers, like last year, are unlikely to splurge come Christmas. The good: Unlike last year, merchants have had a chance to prepare.
  
  The National Retail Federation announced yesterday that it foresees holiday retail purchases to fall by 1 percent this year, as reported in The Chicago Tribune. This is the first time holiday sales have declined two years in a row since economists have been keeping track (around the 1960s). Holiday sales dropped 3.4 percent last year, the first decrease in 40 years. And the holiday season accounts for up to 40 percent of many retailers' annual sales, so a bad Christmas for the retail industry is really, really bad.
  
  The NRF attributes this expected decline to job insecurity among consumers. We reached a 26-year high in unemployment last month, when the nationwide rate rose to 9.8 percent. According to the NRF, this season's shoppers will focus on practical, affordable gifts.
  
  Meanwhile, The Boston Herald had a super-interesting article Monday on how retailers are preparing for the Yule-tide crunch. Apparently, merchants start gearing up for Christmas about a year in advance, which is why most were caught off guard in 2008. That's around the time they started scrapping their 2009 plans in favor of, well, visions of sugarplums. This holiday season, classic is in.
  
  Retailers are abandoning the offbeat, conceptual versions of the holidays which have dominated the past several years. That means no purple, no peacocks, no upside-down trees (apparently that was a thing back in 2007—I must have missed it). Expect a lot of gingerbread houses and nativity scenes in the coming months, not to mention red, green, and gold up the wazoo.
  
  According to the Herald, merchants hope to draw shoppers in with feel-good Christmas standards. The Home Shopping Network, for example, was planning a peacock-laden holiday season, which they scrapped in favor of more conventional themes. 1-800 Flowers is launching a new 1-800 Baskets service, offering quaint gift baskets starting at $15. And Hallmark has altered its cards to emphasize togetherness, rather than gift-giving.
  
  Is any of this stuff going to work? How do you plan to shop this holiday season?
  
  

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