Howard Davidowitz Retail Quotations

This is specially true of the specialty stores. Retailers have to become more creative if they want to keep customers longer in their stores and if they want them to keep coming back.

In the toy industry, about 60 percent of the independent retailers have already gone out of business.

What happened in the third quarter is that retailers controlled inventory and expenses tremendously. So expect to see pretty good gross margins and expect to see inventories down. Put it all together and earnings will be fair.

Those retailers who promoted like mad got the business and they won.

The bigger issue for the entire retail space is that we have a weak economy, unemployment is rampant, corporate spending is down and corporate earnings are not improving.

One big difference was that last year retailers kept promotions under tight control. Things were more panicky this year.

Of course retailers don't want rain today. It just sours the mood of shoppers. But if there's stuff that people really want to buy today, they'll still go out and get it,

Within the retail industry Federated is known for catering to the classes and May to the masses. For the May customer, it's an opportunity to get more upscale merchandise that a Bloomingdales' customer is familiar with.

Retailers have planned their inventories very well again this year but there's no point in that if you get can't shoppers into your store. Expect substantial deals as we go along, especially in clothing and consumer electronics.

Retailers are going to promote like gangbusters from the first minute, and it's going to affect margins. I think at best it's going to be fair.

I had a conversation with Terry this morning and I told him that I don't support a decision to make a huge investment in another department store when many more consumers are shopping at off-mall retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Costco and Kohl's,

He's a brilliant financial engineer. His record is always the same: cut costs, sell assets. That's terrific, only that's no way to run a retail business.

He's a brilliant financial engineer, ... His record is always the same: cut costs, sell assets. That's terrific, only that's no way to run a retail business.

Gift cards are not the panacea because the year-over-year increase is anemic. Because the markdowns in January will be more than last year, retailers will see less dollar impact of additional sales from gift cards compared to last year.

I think there will be heavy promotions over the holidays because retailers have not been meeting their sales plans.

Some retailers are already marking up 40- to 50-percent off signs as we speak.

Specialty apparel is a very fast-moving business. It's also a fickle business of fashion and creativity where the winners are those retailers who can constantly reinvent themselves and their products.

Lean inventories won't help retailers this year if they can't lure customers into their stores.

Tommy Hilfiger supplies its clothes to department stores and we all know that that's the weakest channel in retail in terms of sales,

Also, most big retail chains placed their Christmas orders months ago and the Christmas inventory was already in the pipeline before (the) SARS (outbreak),