In recent weeks, gloomy news has abounded about how the retail industry held up during the crucial holiday season: Macy’s saw its sales sink 2.7 percent and announced it will slash 10,000 jobs. Chains such as Kohl’s, J.C. Penney, Sears and Barnes & Noble also reported sales declines. Traffic to physical stores plunged 12.3 percent amid the November and December shopping rush.
And so it might come as a surprise that the retail industry overall actually rang up solid sales. The National Retail Federation said Friday that retailers saw a healthy 4 percent increase, with a total haul of $658.3 billion. That’s better than the 3.6 percent the trade group had forecast and a significant improvement over the 3 percent growth recorded last year.
It’s a striking incongruity: The industry is faring well, while some of its most recognizable names are not. And it is indicative of a retailing landscape that increasingly is sorting into winners and losers, in which consumers’ bolstered confidence is translating into big spending in some corners of the mall and the internet, and not so much in others.
Many forecasters noted that retailers had quite a few tailwinds this time around for their busy season. Wages have risen and consumer confidence shot up after the presidential election, factors that often make shoppers more willing to splurge. Meanwhile, Thanksgiving fell early this year and Hanukkah fell late, giving stores a longer stretch of time to court gift buyers. Even the weather largely worked in retailers’ favor: There weren’t many major snowstorms that kept shoppers and delivery trucks off the roads, and yet it was cold enough to put people in a Christmas frame of mind.
