No Turn On Red

Retail sales in July continued to be a mixture of disappointment and mediocrity.

Retailers catering to teens saw a mixed bag of results as teens decided to spend more money at Aeropostale (same store sales up 6%) and Buckle (same store sales up 2.8%), but both retailers missed analysts projections. American Eagle saw an 11% drop in same store sales, on top of the 7% drop they saw this time last year. Abercrombie & Fitch continued their terminal velocity fall with a 28% drop in same store sales. No good.

Macy’s saw a 10.7% drop in same store sales, JCPenney reported a 12.3% drop in same store sales, while Kohl’s managed to eek out a nearly flat month (0.4% increase in same store sales). I guess shoppers are really going nuts over that new line by Avirl Lavigne.

Besides the general state of the economy and unemployment through the course of the year, some analysts suggest that the, recently enacted and more recently refueled, Cash for Clunkers program is diverting money from the retail industry:

“One of the unintended negative side effects of the cash for clunkers program was that it’s going to remove money that probably would have been spent in retail stores and restaurants and is now going to go toward a car payment,” said Purdue Consumer Sciences Professor Dr. Richard Feinberg.

And not just “spare change.”

Feinberg estimates the nation’s retailers could lose up to $300 million a month as consumers spend their disposable income on loans instead of lunch. By the end of what’s expected to be another tough holiday shopping season, losses could add up to between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, Feinberg says.

More information on retail sales from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

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Few things on my radar this morning that I want to share:

Great post by Get Elastic that analyzes the checkout login process of several of the top converting sites. New users resist registering and want to check out without creating an account. Very good data and thoughts there for anyone working in e-commerce.

Not all the news about the retail industry should be bad. Seeking Alpha has a list of 10 retailers with stronger than expected first quarter sales. A slight glimmer of positive news in the midst of all the doom and gloom about the economy that is still lingering.

For the designers in the house, I really love going through the sites at Design Meltdown. Always an inspirational gallery site. Last week they posted a new collection of “super clean” websites. Just because the design is clean doesn’t mean it has to be bland. Good inspiration there.

Jeremiah Owyang is live blogging from the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam and has a recap of the panel on digital natives. Kids born after 1980, who grew up with the level of technology, should be looked at differently by businesses and brands. This is an important segment of consumers that retailers have to be aware of and cater to. Teen retailers have been forced to get it, but how will retailers react as this generation continues to grow older?

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comScore has released their October 2008 US retail e-commerce sales estimates. The verdict? Sales were weak – only up 1% over October 2007, which is the softest increase since comScore started tracking US retail e-commerce sales in 2001.

For households making less than $50,000, sales were down 3% for the past three months, compared to the same time period last year. Households with incomes over $100,000 saw a 14% growth in the same time period.

The economy is hitting everyone hard right now and it appears that no retailer, online or live, is immune at this point.

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The stimulus checks have been (presumably) spent, back to school shopping is underway, and the retail sales numbers for July are in and they are, well, pretty ugly. A lot of retailers posting negative same-store-sales numbers for the month, many of them posting numbers that fell below Wall Street’s expectations. Wall Street is responding – as of 12:30, the S&P Retail Index is down around $7.

The negative results are hitting all segments of retailers – from department stores to the mall, teen retailers to mass market merchandisers. Wal-Mart posted a positive sales increase of 3.0%, but that is less than the 3.5% increase that Wall Street was looking for. Target saw same store sales drop 1.2% in the month of July and warn that August isn’t going to be much better. JCPeneny’s sales dropped 6.5% but raised their Q2 guidance “due to better than expected sell-through of promotionally priced merchandise and continued expense management measures.” Kohl’s saw a steep 10.4 drop in same store sales in the month.

Gap saw negative numbers across all brands – Old Navy down 16%, Banana Republic down 8%, and Gap North America down 6%. When are they going to spin off the Old Navy brand, sell it, and let someone else deal with the turnaround?

Teen retailers aren’t seeing the Back to School numbers they hoped for with American Eagle down 7%, PacSun was down 4%, Abercrombie & Fitch (as a company) was down 7% (with only A&F proper posting flat numbers, up 1% for the month. Hollister was down 11% – blowing away the 4.1% decrease expected by analysts), but Aeropostale saw sales jump 13%.

More coverage from CNN/Money, Forbes, and Marketwatch.

Reminder, all of July’s numbers are available to analyze over at our partner site, Retail Numbers.

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Another mixed month for retail sales.  While some retailers rebounded and look to go into Back to School on a positive note, it was another dark month for some mall and teen retailers.

Wal-Mart beat expectations with a 5.8% increase in June (showing 6.1% increase at their US name-brand stores and a 4.6% increase at their Sam’s Club locations). Target ended up in positive territory with a 0.4% uptick in same store sales. Costco showed a 9% increase, Kohl’s beat estimates with a 2.3% increase, and even mall retailer Aeropostale showed gains with a 12% increase in June.

The month was not as kind to mall and teel retailers such as Gap (company down 7%), Abercrombie (down 3%), and American Eagle (down 11%).

June’s numbers have been posted to Retail Numbers, which allows you to chart and track the retail industry monthly same-store sales.

More coverage from Fox Business and the Associated Press.

Photo above from Flickr user James@mannequindisplay. com, used under Creative Commons.

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In an effort to learn some new technology and add something new to this website, I have developed a simple application to track and graph retail monthly comp store sales data. Also known as same store sales, this is a measurement of change in sales in stores that have been open for over a year.

Located at http://www.noturnonred.org/charts, the Retail Monthly Comp Sales Charts is a dynamic application using PHP, Ajax, and MySQL. Still in it’s early stages, it will be updated monthly when the new retail numbers are announced. The database currently contains data for approximately 20 retailers that I cover often in this blog, from January 2005 to present. In addition to viewing the data by retailer, you can also compare two retailers over the same time period. With time, I will get additional retailers into the database and extend the range of information available.

I love looking at these numbers and I created this application for me to better spot trends in retailers’ sales.

For example, does American Eagle’s healthy sales this year make it appear that they could be in for a very solid back to school season? It seems that they have had a more positive trend this year, compared to some other similar retailers in the marketplace.

Could this slight uptick that AE is showing be the foundation for a great BTS season?

These are the kinds of things that I like to look at. While I may not always know the reasons for why things are trending one way or another, I still like to look at these numbers. I hope the application I have developed is useful to others, as well.

Again, the URL for the Retail Monthly Comp Sales Charts is http://www.noturnonred.org/charts/. Let me know what you think.

Note: Motley Fool has a very good roundup of what exactly these numbers are and what they mean to retailers and analysts. They explain all of this much better than I can.

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If you look at the retail comp store sales numbers for the month of April, you are looking at one ugly picture. But this was to be expected when taking into account the early Easter holiday this year.

For the month of April, the mall posted lackluster numbers: Abercrombie & Fitch saw a decrease of 14% (further breakdown of the brands: A&F adult -13, abercrombie, -18, Holister -17, & Ruehl -6), American Eagle down 10, Aeropostale down 14, Ann Taylor -12.8 (further breakdown of the brands: Ann Taylor -8.2 & Ann Taylor LOFT -17.4), Gap Inc down 16 (further breakdown of the brands: Gap North America -14, Banana Republic -13, Old Navy -20, and the International division -5), Hot Topic -9.1, Limited Brands -1.0, PacSun -14.

Some department stores saw slightly better numbers, but not all of them. Winners included Nordstrom (up 3.1) and Saks Fifth Avenue (up 11.7!!). On the flipside, Kohl’s was down 10.5, Federated was down 2.2, JCPenney was down 4.7, and Dillard’s was down 14.0.

Target saw a drop of 6.1 and Wal-Mart was down 3.5.

These numbers are bad, but are the indiciative of a worrisome trend? Look at March’s numbers and remember that these April numbers don’t include Easter. I think there are some retailers who are struggling, but the industry as a whole is just fine. A better picture of retail health will be seen over the next two weeks as retailers release their second quarter earnings results.

More information from Minyanville and the New York Times.

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• No related posts.

Same store sales for the month of March are in. Easter fell a week earlier this year and that propelled retailers to a strong month. Across the board, analysts projections were beaten and CEOs are congratulating themselves on a job well done.

Mall based specialty retailers saw a stronger month than they had seen in recent memory: Same store sales were up at Abercrombie and Fitch (up 7.0% vs 1.4% estimate), American Eagle (up 20.0% vs 10.9% est), Aeropostale (up 15.9% vs 9.3% est), Hot Topic (3.4% vs 0.3%), and even Pacific Sunwear (14.1% vs 3.3%).

Gap Inc posted an overall increase of 6%, but look at the brand breakdown: Gap North America was up 4% vs. -13% the same month last year, Banana Republic up 8% vs. -7% last year, Old Navy up 10% vs -15% last year, and Gap International down 5% vs -16% last year. Overall the company showed a strong month, but I am most impressed by the gains at Old Navy. Female shoppers must be responding well to the new line of babydoll dresses (I know my girlfriend has! I’m sure at least 2 of Old Navy’s 10 percentage points increase are due to her March shopping).

Mid-tier department store retailers Kohl’s and JCPenney beat estimates with same store sale increases of 16.8% and 10.6% respectively. Nordstrom’s saw sales rise 15%, while Federated struggled and came in short of estimates (3.8%) with same store sales rising only 2.3%.

Like everyone else in my town, I found myself in my local Target at 9:30 the night before Easter looking for candy and easter baskets for my neices & nephews. With the way that place was cleared out, it’s no wonder Target as a chain posted a same store sales increase of 12%. Wal-Mart came in with a 4% increase. Not good, but not great.

More information from Minyanville and CNBC.

I am traditionally leary of the March or April sales on their own, due to the yearly differences in the date of Easter. I’m interested to see how well these numbers hold up when April’s final numbers come out. It looks like most retailers benefitted from the early Easter, which allowed those sales to get lumped in with March’s overall sales – as opposed to April last year.

Will April be as kind to retailers? Time will tell, but I’m betting that with the cold spell over the Northern part of this country that sales are going to be very, very interesting.

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A mixed bag of results for retailers. Generally positive month for department stores, but a pretty wild range of results for mall-based retailers. More than a few full year outlooks have been cut, prompting investors to react accordingly.

Department stores fared decently with the mild weather. Same store sales for Kohl’s up 3.0%, JC Penney up 2.6%, Federated up 4.4%, Dillard’s fell 5%, Nordstrom was up 9.0%, and Saks was up 11.0%. Mixed bag of results, since even the positive gains for KSS, JCP, and Federated still fell below expectations.

Specialty retailers were generally beat this month. Same store sales for Abercrombie were down 1.0%, American Eagle was up 13.0%, Aeropostale was up 1.7%, Ann Taylor was down 5.3%, Gap down 8.0%, Hot Topic down 5.1%, Limited up 4.0%, and PacSun down 3.2%.

Target was up 4.1% while Wal-Mart same store sales were up 1.6%.

Seems like the mall stores, with space at a premium, were hurt the most by the mild weather nationally. With only so much space available in the store, and most of that devoted to sweaters and cold weather accessories, things can go sour fast when no one is shopping for that.

More coverage from Minyanville.

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Headline says it all, folks. CVS Corp. reports that their July same store sales rose 9.5% on the backs of prescription drugs, beating Wall Street estimates. Sales of nonprescription merchandise rose 7% in the month, beating the 5.6% estimate. Not a bad month for the #2 drugstore chain in the country.

More from CNN/Money.

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