Kurt Barnard
Kurt Barnard
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Halloween has become in recent times a little more of a retail-type holiday than you've seen it in decades past. It's becoming a little more important not just for sales of scary masks, but there generally is more traffic into the stores. It's sort of the beginning of fall, something like the precursor for what's to come.
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There's a general sense of weakness and caution and I'll tell you, the headlines in the newspapers these days do not help. We're seeing more layoffs and consumers are beginning to feel there's a cold winter breeze suddenly blowing their way.
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There's a general sense of weakness and caution and I'll tell you the headlines in the newspapers these days do not help, ... We're seeing more layoffs and consumers are beginning to feel there's a cold winter breeze suddenly blowing their way.
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I think Conaway is a good retailing executive, but he made too many mistakes at the very beginning of his tenure at Kmart. It is quite possible that his background and length of experience did not sufficiently qualify him for the immense job he was taking on.
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Everybody is worried about a soft landing for the economy and a contraction of consumer spending. And come Christmas it will be far less exciting than a year ago. The high cost at the gas pump is beginning to take its toll and for a lot of families spending an extra $20-to-$25 a month on gasoline means spending that much less on stores.
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It was disappointing. A lot of stores told us that when they opened at 7 or 8 in the morning with special deals good for two hours, crowds were beginning to mass. But at the stroke of 9, when those sales were supposed to end, the crowds disappeared like a snowflake in the palm of your hand.
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The blizzard was a serious setback for retailers, especially since the Presidents Day weekend is a major day for sales. Most of the malls and independent stores were shut in the Northeast.
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February is a testing month for spring, and the results have not been spectacular, ... There seems to be a sense of foreboding that while spring is likely to be a smidgen better than we have seen in past months, it is not going to be a barn-burner.
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Americans are being bombarded with announcements of layoffs. Anytime you listen to the radio it's always 3,000 laid off here, 500 there, ... That means a lot of people who have decent jobs and good income hear that little voice in the back of their head asking the question 'could my number be up next?' They're buying what they need, but they don't buy frivolously.
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They (retailers) don't know. All they can do is hope and guess more than anything else. It's a brutal, brutal problem,
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Rebates are wonderful to the extent that they are executed, regardless of the deficit.
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If you stash money away in a savings account, then there's less available to buy things in a store, from candy to cars. This is not quite the conventional retrenchment we've known from past recessions, but it may represent a kind of wishy-washy stagnation.
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Retailing and consumer spending are a function of a four-letter word -- jobs. And there are no jobs being formed in the United States at the present time. We are in an unfortunate labor climate, one that might be called not at all propitious for retail spending.
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They are now getting into the apparel business in a way they have not known before -- in a way that establishes Sears Roebuck as a major operation in apparel.