Blog: Zoo Story

A friend called last week in the midst of her Christmas shopping, apologizing for all the background noise. “I’m in Best Buy,” she said, “and it’s a zoo in here!”

I think I’m free to interpret “it’s a zoo in here” as being a good thing for Best Buy, and for retailing, if not for monkeys.

Having written about the retail industry for nearly 20 years, I’ve tracked all those measurables: quarterly reports, sales figures, same-store sales comparisons. But I’ve also become sensitive to the non-measurables – crowded stores, long lines at checkouts, hard-to-find parking, the off-hand shopper complaints about crowds – that mean business is bustling.

Good as it was, though, “it’s a zoo in here” did not translate to the bottom line. A day or two later, Best Buy reported a 29 percent plummet in third quarter profits and its stock price tumbled 15 percent in a single day.

Part of the problem was that all that heavy promotional spending, leading up to the Black Friday weekend, ate into Best Buy’s revenues. So the money Best Buy spent to get people into the zoo nullified the narrow margins it racked up once they were in there. We just can’t get out of our own way these days.

And it all started so promisingly. The National Retail Federation said that Black Friday spending per shopper surged 9.1 percent over last year – the biggest increase since 2006 – to an average of almost $400 a customer. In all, said the NRF, 6.6 percent more shoppers visited stores on the Thanksgiving weekend than last year.

But then that economy we can’t seem to stop talking about raised its ugly head. (It’s the elephant in the zoo, I suppose.) After the record-setting Thanksgiving weekend, the International Council of Shopping Centers reported a cumulative drop of 2.4 percent in the following two weeks, the biggest such plunge in 11 years.

Undaunted, the cheerleading NRF raised its holiday forecast to 3.8 percent growth for the season. Of course, that’s compared to what? Compared to last season, one of the worst holiday periods in years.

By the first week in December, almost 40 percent of Americans told America’s Research Group that they were done with their holiday shopping. Oh yeah?? Retailers who had already been criticized for moving up the holiday start proceeded to extend it later than ever. It began its annual super sales last Saturday and extends them right through midnight on Christmas Eve.

If you’re reading this, Santa, stay away from Paramus, N.J. You may hit some fierce mall traffic on Route 17.