Howard Davidowitz Retailers Quotations

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

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,

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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,

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