WisBusiness: Packers’ retail sales are bright spot in holiday shopping

By Brian E. Clark
WisBusiness.com

It may have had just a little something to do with a winning season, but the Green Bay Packers’ holiday sales of consumer clothing and other gear jumped a whopping 30 percent over the same period last year, according to team officials.

That most likely clobbered the results for other Badger State retailers, who are predicting modest gains of around 4 percent, the head of the Wisconsin Merchants Federation said.

A Packers spokesman declined to give dollar figures for sales, but he said the team is experience a “strong year” in many aspects.

Now, if they can just win in the playoffs…

Chris Tackett, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Merchants Association, said official sales figures won’t be in until Jan. 15th, but he expects holiday retail sales here to be up around 4 percent or more from 2006.

That would mirror national predictions from the National Retail Federation, which is predicting a similar gain of roughly 4 percent, Tackett said. That forecast is down from the previous year, when holiday retails sales increased by 4.6 percent.

Even a 4 percent national increase could be optimistic, however. MasterCard Advisors, part of the credit card company, is estimating that sales increased only 3.6 percent from Thanksgiving to Christmas, compared to the same period in 2006. Growth during the previous holiday period for MasterCard was 6.6 percent.

Tackett said a struggling housing market, tightening credit and rising gas prices combined to dampen seasonal spending.

“Still, apparel sales were good in November, and electronics were strong in December,” he said.

“And Wisconsin’s employment figures are a little better than the national ones, so I have a feeling we may have done a little better than the nation as a whole. But again, we won’t know until Jan. 15.”

On the Internet side, holiday sales were strong, but the growth rate wasn’t as stellar as in recent years.

Analysts said e-commerce grew at a robust rate of 19 percent – which would make off-line retailers drool – but that was down from growth rates during the past four years. The drop is blamed on a cooling economy, but could also reflect a maturing of the Internet shopping market, they said.

Officials from shop.org, the online shopping division of the National Retail Federation, said it would be hard to maintain growth of more than 25 percent a year for Internet holiday sales.