Britt Beemer Stores Quotations

With nothing hot to buy in decorations this Christmas, many stores started selling two weeks earlier than ever before, beginning in mid-September. Many stores skipped Thanksgiving altogether and went from Halloween to Christmas.

I think the big story of Christmas will be this shift in consumer attitudes where people felt that stores gouged them with their pricing strategy. The 30 to 40 percent discounts this year instead of the 50 to 70 percent off last year will help profits but will hurt customer loyalty in the long term.

Overall, the moderate-priced stores such as J.C. Penney, Sears and Wal-Mart had good traffic levels. We think luxury sales were probably flat this past weekend because more people said they decided to go away on vacation before Christmas this year than last year. So this could have impacted spending on other high-end items.

Wal-Mart deserves their high admiration level because they do what they say. They give America a place to buy at low prices in stores where employees seem happy to be there and willing to assist customers when questions are asked.

At this point in the buying season, parents have only spent $71.96 so far, so there is time for stores to get aggressive and drive more sales,

Consumers look around and see (the Home store's) $1,299 sofa and see others for $699 or $799 at other stores and it's a reality check. I find after the hoopla is over, they become retail museums.

The consumer that's going to Wal-Mart is going to be very price-driven. The person who goes to one of these stores may be very high-tech-driven.

The luxury stores are the ones hitting the home runs and the discount stores are going to end up doing some pretty good numbers, ... I'm very worried that the middle part of the market is not here.

The trouble today with retailers is they can't afford to have too many underperforming stores. When 10 percent of your stores are unprofitable, you will start losing money. That wasn't the case years ago.