This year’s holiday shopping season started with a bang and ended with a flourish, but a dip in the middle has some wondering whether overall sales figures will be worth celebrating.
Lackluster shopping in the first two weeks of December created a “very uneven” holiday retail season in Colorado, said Shannon Butler, director of government affairs for the Colorado Retail Council.
Butler on Wednesday predicted that Colorado retailers will notch a 2.8 percent increase in holiday sales over last year. That compares with a 5.2 percent nationwide increase for retailers in 2010. Generally, a 4 percent increase in sales is considered a healthy season.
Colorado’s final sales figures won’t be available for some time because of a delay by the state in calculating sales-tax figures. But local retailers’ experiences appear to be echoing a national trend in which some are characterizing holiday shopping as divided into two seasons: the Black Friday binge and a last-minute surge.
Together, they added up to decent sales gains for retailers.
In November, spending rose 4.1 percent. And from Dec. 1 to Dec. 24, it rose 4.7 percent compared with the same period last year, according to research firm ShopperTrak.
“The downs and ups were much more accentuated,” said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. “It just shows how cautious the consumer is. Consumers are bargain-hunters more today than ever before.”
Heading into the season, stores were nervous that shoppers would be tightfisted. Many officially opened the season with discounts on TVs and toys that started as early as Thanksgiving Day. Consumers came out in droves, resulting in record spending.
Then the frenzy tapered off. A mild winter and the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday encouraged people to wait until the last minute and accentuated the peaks and valleys of spending.
Butler, of the Colorado Retail Council, noted that local sales were particularly strong from Nov. 25 through through Dec. 4, but tapered off the weeks of Dec. 5 and 12.
Although shopping picked up in the days before Christmas and remained strong this week, it will not make up for those lackluster weeks, she predicted.
Butler noted that consumers have become incredibly savvy, knowing when to expect the biggest sales and which merchants have the best prices. She said shopping has changed in the past decade because of technology and the ability to instantly compare prices.
John Neuner, manager of the Sony Store at Cherry Creek, said the week after Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas showed higher sales than in 2010, including big-ticket items such as home theaters and computers, “with virtually no returns.”
Neuner said the attitude of the customer appeared to be, “I’ve held back four years, and this year I’m going to spend.”
Brittin Karaffa, marketing director at Park Meadows, was also optimistic about the season, adding that several of the mall’s retailers have told her their sales were up from last year.
However, Karaffa emphasized that she has not talked to all 185 retailers and won’t be able to tell for a few weeks whether overall sales were up, down or steady.
She said the day after Thanksgiving and the two weekends before Christmas were the busiest at Park Meadows.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
