Stores Exit Season with Bare Shelves

As predicted, most retailers have exited the holiday season with almost nothing on their shelves. They know better, they’ve been burned due to overstocking in the past, especially in the unpredictable job and economic climate we’ve found ourselves in lately, and had to let things go for next to nothing. Gone are the days of things being reduced down to eighty and ninety percent I suppose!

I went shopping a few days after Christmas, and was pretty shocked at how barren all the shelves looked. Even places that were huge retail outlets like Target and Wal-mart, didn’t have their usual volumes of clothes and other ticket items for Christmas time, so I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t really able to find all the awesome deals that I had been able to in years past. It was kind of a bummer, but at the same time, I understand and am glad that these establishments have it figured out so that they aren’t forced to close their doors, and God forbid we then suffer another downturn, perhaps more severe than the first because of that.

This means that people are starting to get the hang of the new economic reality, and that’s a good thing in the end. I do wonder how larger ticket items fared this Christmas season. It seemed that I was not seeing things like large exercise equipment and other typical large gifts that people might ask for as sort of a spoiler for themselves or for a loved on, go off the shelves (so to speak) like they have in years past. In fact, I didn’t even really see big ticket items like that advertised too heavily for this Christmas season either, so it doesn’t surprise me that they weren’t a hot seller.

However, the numbers do show that retailers have gotten bigger sales numbers this holiday than the last year, which is great news, and they actually had to bring in new merchandise to restock their shelves for the new year after Christmas, which is pretty unusual for this time of year.