Warm weather leaves people cold about going to the store

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The unseasonably warm weather has left some people feeling cold about holiday shopping.

Rosemarie Nowicki, who lives in Berkeley Heights, N.J., finally spent some of her holiday budget last weekend buying coats online for her family because she hated the thought of being stuck in a store with such mild temperatures outside.

“It’s hard to get into the holiday spirit; I’ve been walking around in short-sleeve shirts and capri leggings,” Nowicki says. “I was certainly not going to the mall.”

Turns out, lots of shoppers feel the same way as temperatures in cities across the country, including New York and Philadelphia, near record levels for December. The balmy weather hasn’t done anything to entice Americans to venture out and shop, which has hurt sales at stores that depend on the holiday season for up to 40 percent of their annual revenue.

Planalytics, a weather- forecasting firm for retailers, estimates so far this season mall-based clothing stores have lost $343 million in sales compared with last year. That’s the largest weather-related loss since 1998 when a devastating ice storm hit parts of the Northeast.

Sales of cold-weather items have been particularly icy. Sales of women’s boots in New York, for instance, are down 24 percent for the first half of December, according to Planalytics. And First Data, which analyzes payments at stores and online, said fur sales fell 20 percent from Oct. 31 through Monday.

“Winter didn’t happen and so the clothes, the scarves are not selling,” said Ron Friedman, head of the retail and consumer products group at accounting firm Marcum LLP. As a result, he says shoppers will see discounts of 75 percent after Christmas.

The fair-weathered shopping challenge underscores how U.S. consumers, still affected by the Great Recession, remain strategic in their buying patterns. It’s a habit they picked up during the economic downturn that’s remained ever since.

Many shoppers only buy what they can wear, so it stands to reason that they’re not buying coats, boots and hats this year. And since cold-weather items also are hot gifts during the holiday shopping season, many of those items are left on store shelves. C. Britt Beemer, America’s Research Group, a consumer research firm, estimates that cold-weather items account for 26 percent of overall holiday clothing sales.

The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail group, is still sticking by its prediction earlier in the season that sales in November and December will rise 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion. That would mark a slowdown from the 4.1 percent growth last year.