Snowstorm cuts into sales, but retailers expect a big week

Associated Press

The snowstorm that blanketed the East Coast, closing malls and snowing in shoppers, spelled trouble for retailers, but elsewhere in the country stores saw a strong turnout on the last weekend before Christmas.

Eager to win business from snowed-in Easterners, retail Web sites including Macy’s and J.C. Penney were offering free express shipping Sunday. Traffic to retail Web sites spiked all weekend. Elsewhere in the country, crowds looking for discounts found some, but far less than the 60 percent- to 70 percent-off sales they wanted.

Retailers head into the home stretch hoping the storm leaves pent-up demand that will give them one last gift.

A snowstorm the Saturday before Christmas, often the busiest shopping day of the year, is about as bad as it gets for retailers, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail industry analyst at market researcher NPD Group. But there’s still time.

“If they’re not buying it online, they’ve got a plan to go out now when they do get dug out,” Cohen said. “They’ll hit the stores with a little more of a method to their madness, so all is not lost.”

“Super Saturday” usually accounts for $15 billion worth of sales nationwide, according to Scott Bernhardt of weather research firm Planalytics. Stores certainly did not hit that number this year, though Bernhardt said he wasn’t sure how much they missed by.

Retailers were still totaling the impact of the snowstorm Sunday. The first hard estimates are due from ShopperTrak on Tuesday.

Bernhardt said it’s not yet clear how many stores closed, though many did around the Washington, D.C., region, which got more than 25 inches of snow.

The storm that stretched from the Carolinas to New England caused about one-third of Toys “R” Us stores to cut hours, but sales weren’t as bad as expected because people got out to shop before the storm hit, CEO Jerry Storch said. Online sales also rose.

He said retailers had been expecting a big shopping burst this week, but with the storm, it will be even more frenzied, so the toy-store chain is increasing staffing.

Shoppers who stayed home drove a big spike in online shopping. Retail Web traffic peaked at 2.9 million visitors Saturday night, according to the Akamai Retail Net Usage Index. That was up from 1.9 million on the Saturday before Christmas in 2008, though that day — Dec. 20 — was closer to Christmas than this year.