Kurt Barnard
Kurt Barnard
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What J.C. Penney needs to do is to make the stores they do have palatable, pleasant to shop, and all of this needs to be done with an eye toward recapturing the market they've lost,
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What Sept. 11 has done to the economy is to accelerate, hasten and deepen the decline, but the decline existed before. The attack gave it the extra push in terms of retail sales. If you don't have a paycheck coming in, it doesn't matter how much cost of gasoline has gone down.
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What's happening is very simple. The numbers we saw today are clear evidence that the American public is shell-shocked to the point of being frightened over a big long list of circumstances surrounding the economy over which they have no power, no control.
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What the Gap is doing is not only what it must be doing, but what it should have done a long time ago.
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What we are looking at is very strong and very necessary steps as the first installment of a Kmart turnaround, ... What he's doing right now is terribly important. It needed to be done, biting into the sour apple so to speak, in order to create a clear path for the future. I think Kmart is going to be customer-centric in the future, competitive in the market place and exciting to shop.
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What we are seeing is that consumers' cautious spending is now stretching to the low-priced discount stores as well as to the other stores. ...Today, saving money is chic. Bargain hunting is fashionable.
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We have had a series of rate increases since last year, and so far we have not felt any impact on retailing off all of these increases. However, eventually something will have to give. I would predict that, say towards the end of the year, the fourth quarter, the very all-important holiday fourth quarter, we are going to see that the rate increases will finally take a bite. And that could be a comfort to retailing.
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This trend is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Growth will continue and will be very strong, but it will be more moderate than it was last year, ... Make no mistake about it - this growth will continue. Consumer spending will continue to grow, but it's not going to suddenly stop or go back. It will continue at a more reasonable pace.
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Until the unemployment picture improves, consumers will be very cautious about their spending habits. We think the second half of the year could also be difficult for the retail industry unless the job demand improves.
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Today's (consumer confidence) numbers do very little other than to simply confirm what we had predicted some time ago, that a consumer spending slowdown is basically inevitable so long as the employment climate remains as stagnant as it is,
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You don't pay $200 for a pair of shorts,
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With gas prices the way they are and with people suddenly being burdened with monthly car payments, they are looking for bargains. People are taking their money from Bloomingdale's to Penney, Kohl's (NYSE: KSS - news ) and Target (NYSE: TGT - news ).
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We are now combining ... American history with modern technology and modern contemporary lifestyles.
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The potential for Web sales is tremendous and it carries the potential of completely altering and upsetting over the next few years all channels of retail selling.