The last few weeks of the year are critical for retailers. It’s especially true in 2012, when the economy is emerging – albeit slowly – from a long funk. Such growth in sales at traditional brick-and-mortar and online retailers suggests that holiday sales will be stronger this year than in the past several. Still, concerns about unemployment and residual consumer nervousness give jittery merchants reason for concern.
Given such contradictory signs, it is understandable that the nation’s merchants are closely watching their books as Christmas and other holiday shopping begins in earnest.
The worry about the bottom line is understandable.
Many businesses in the retail trade earn a large portion of their yearly profit during the final months of the year. It’s not unusual, analysts report, for some to earn up to a third of their annual income during the period. Given that, anything that can affect sales – local worries about jobs, news about blips in the nation’s economy, harsh weather, etc. – is reason enough for business owners to brood. Initial holiday sales predictions, though, should help ease such concerns this year.
Recently, the National Retail Federation forecast that 2012 holiday sales will increase 4.1 percent. That is higher, an agency spokesman says, than the 10-year-average holiday sales increase of 3.5 percent. He added that it was NRF’s most optimistic forecast since the recession. Surely, those numbers are reason for optimism among merchants.