ATLANTA – An East Coast snowstorm put a damper on after-Christmas shopping in the region Sunday. But shoppers across the rest of the country scoured clearance racks and spent gift cards during the afterglow of the best holiday season for retailers since 2007.
Blizzard warnings stretched from New Jersey to Maine. Up to 20 inches of snow was expected in Philadelphia and Boston and up to 16 inches in New York City, where snow was falling by midmorning.
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“The forecast will tend to keep (shoppers) at home. It’s not the best day for shopping,” said Scott A. Bernhardt, chief operating officer at the weather research firm Planalytics.
At least one mall, MacArthur Center in Norfolk, Va., planned to close early because of the snow.
Because the storm is after Christmas, the loss will hurt retailers less than last year’s snowstorm the Saturday before Christmas that buried much of the same area. That one cost retailers about $2 billion. This time, there’s no Dec. 25 deadline.
“People will just wait a day to do exchanges and use their gift cards. It’s no big deal,” said Greg Maloney, CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle, which manages malls across the country.
He expects December revenue to grow a healthy 7 percent to 10 percent from last year.
Strong spending this past week would build on the highest-spending holiday season since 2007, a record year.
The period from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1 makes up less than 10 percent of the Nov. 1-Dec. 31 season but accounts for more than 15 percent of holiday spending, the research firm ShopperTrak says.
Predictions call for retail revenue to increase by 3 to 4 percent for the season, the best percentage increase since 2006.
The snow will send some shoppers online, where sales have been stellar.
IBM Coremetrics said online spending rose more than 16 percent the week ending Christmas Day, while the average order rose 13 percent to $192.52. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 19, total online spending rose 12 percent to $28.36 billion, according to the research firm comScore Inc.
The day after Christmas was the second-highest revenue day for retailers last year with $7.9 billion spent, according to ShopperTrak.
Improved weather in the South and Midwest was expected to bring out the shoppers. The nation’s largest mall, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., expected 100,000 shoppers Sunday.
“We happen to have good weather, unlike what we’ve been having,” mall spokesman Dan Jasper said. He expects holiday revenue for stores at the mall will rise 8 percent over last year.
At Atlantic Station in downtown Atlanta, shopping picked up in late morning as a rare snowfall began melting.
Shelly Melby, 43, said her family will likely spend $400 to $500 on post-Christmas deals.
“Just looking at the sales,” she said. “The kids are looking for clothes.”
Some shoppers couldn’t find what they wanted. At Best Buy at Atlantic Center mall in Brooklyn, Marie Brown was disappointed to learn that a laptop computer advertised at $200 off was long gone.
“We should have come earlier, because what we wanted was totally sold out,” she said. She bought another laptop at $60 off. “We still saved money.”
Joelle Lee, 33, and her cousin, Rebecca Jardine, 18, hit Pembroke Lakes Mall in Pembroke Pines, Fla., early Sunday. They were looking for half-price Christmas ornaments and New Year’s Eve outfits. Jardine splurged on a watch at Guess marked down 40 percent.
Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the market research firm NPD Group, said strong sales after Christmas would be icing on the holiday cake for retailers.
“They came into December having made money,” he said. “If December is prosperous, that will lead them to feel confident in 2011, and that’s really what this last week is all about.”
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