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)...

Metaverse: Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary This week there was a mind-blowing story from CNBC; Metaverse ‘Real Estate’ Sales Top $500M; Expected to Double This Year. Most of this has been concentrated in four platforms, which between them offer over 268,000 “parcels”...

Wall Street Correction and Impact on Retail IPOs… As the stock market opened this morning (1/24), it appeared that the downward trend in pricing was starting to hit correction territory.  Market corrections are typically defined as the market losing 10% to 20% of its...

Inflation Concerns Take Center Stage, but Stagflation Comparisons Just Wrong Forbes released their latest Forbes Advisor-Ipsos Consumer Confidence survey this past week. Nearly two thirds of the roughly 1,000 respondents expect the rate of inflation to increase, with...

Closure Season? We may be through with CoVid, but it unfortunately is not quite done with us. The rise of the Omicron variant has sent infection rates soaring and forced many retailers to come up with contingency plans for dealing with absenteeism ranging from Macy’s...

Back to the Grind Happy New Year everyone! Before I get going on this week’s commentary, I want to remind everyone that starting this week (Wednesday, January 5) I will be hosting three straight days of my 2022 Retail Forecast. There are three sessions planned (one...

The Home Stretch This past week a client of mine called me up, concerned over the “weak retail sales report.” He had just read on MarketWatch; “US Retail Sales Soften in November as Consumers Face High Inflation.”  He was concerned if projections regarding a strong...

ICSC Week I am at ICSC in Las Vegas this week, so will be skipping the commentary. Stay tuned for my summary of the show and what you need to know in the next issue. See you next week, Garrick

Black Friday Continuing to Diminish in Importance Another Black Friday weekend is in the books; initial data on foot traffic from Sensormatic Solutions indicates that store traffic was up 48% from 2020’s levels, but that it still trailed 2019 totals by about 28%. This...

The Real Deal on Retail Sales Numbers This week’s headlines… The Commerce Department released the latest retail sales numbers this past week. The headlines seem clear enough. For example, the U.S. News & World Report wrote “Retail Sales Surge 1.7% in October.” ...

Are Consumers Worse or Better Off Than 18 Months Ago? Why Don’t They Think So? This week’s headlines… Consumer confidence fell to a decades-level low. Granted, there are multiple measures of consumer confidence out there. This one, the University of Michigan’s Index,...

This week’s headlines… Hiring rebounded in October after last month’s lackluster jobs report; unemployment fell from 4.8% to 4.6% with the economy adding 531,000 jobs. The hospitality sector (which includes hotels and restaurants) led all other economic categories,...

Headlines of the week? The NRF predicts greatest holiday sales season gains ever, despite supply chain challenges and inflationary pressures. Consumers (not all) are sitting on roughly $5 trillion more in their bank accounts today than in pre-pandemic February 2020…...