Week Ending December 4th, 2021

eCommerce Coming Back to Earth An interesting statistic emerged this week. Amazon reported its numbers for Q1. They reflected a double-digit gain (+17.1%) for growth in their physical stores, Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh. Online sales, however, fell -3.3% during this...

Recession or Not, Some Tips for Small Businesses to Prepare This week economist Paul Krugman wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times, “How a Recession Might—and Might Not—Happen” that I think is worth reading. Speculation about a recession ahead has surged in...

Retail Sales Remain Strong but Showing Inflation Toll Last week the new commerce department numbers came out for retail sales and—no big surprise—rising inflation appears to be taking a slight edge off retail sales numbers. March retail sales increased 0.5% over...

Job Market Nears Pre-Pandemic Unemployment Levels The past week has been a crazy week for retail-related news. Restaurant expansion plans have surged (as you will see by four entire pages of articles referenced this week—and that wasn’t all of them). Meanwhile, we are...

Job Market Nears Pre-Pandemic Unemployment Levels The latest unemployment numbers came out last week. The U.S. is now closing in on matching pre-pandemic unemployment levels. March unemployment fell to just 3.6%, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reporting...

Ukraine War Impacts Could Speed Eventual Consolidation of Delivery Services First the good news. Yes, gas prices have stabilized over the past couple of weeks. After the national average had hit $4.33 per gallon on March 11th, they have since dipped back to $4.24 per...

Inflation Getting Worse Before it Gets Better; Interest Rate Hikes Could Be in Play by End of the Week Amid soaring interest rates and a booming job market, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates this past week for the first time in four years. While the Fed’s...

Inflation Getting Worse Before it Gets Better; Interest Rate Hikes Could Be in Play by End of the Week The latest inflation numbers came out this past week and—no surprise—the consumer price index (CPI) ticked up yet again. On a year-over-year basis, the CPI for...

Ukraine Crisis Overshadows Everything We are two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war has clearly entered a new stage. The strength of Ukrainian resistance appears to have been initially vastly underestimated by the Kremlin, which has increasingly...

Ukraine Crisis Overshadows Everything Within the span of just a few days, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has overshadowed virtually all other news. As this is a highly fluid situation, it is difficult to create analyses that may not be outdated within days, if not...

No Closure Season This Year Thanks to Sustained Consumer Spending Boom Once again, we had a week in which store opening announcements far outpaced closure news. The first quarter of the year—more specifically January and February—has traditionally been the time (in...

Lockehouse Advisory and Consulting: Retail 2022 Webinar We will be back next week with more detailed analysis on the news of the week and pertinent issues, though in this edition there are some great articles about the outside impact that inflation (worst in 40 years)...