Monday, Jan. 07, 1980

Semi-Happy Returns

"The Ted Grinch did not steal the retail Christmas." So says Ted Grindal, a happy executive with the Minneapolis-based Dayton Hudson specialty and department-store chain, speaking about the 14% sales increase his company rang up in December. While not every retailer did that well, most were pleasantly surprised by the big spending they saw this holiday season. The forecasts for December, in which stores commonly do about 20% of their annual trade, were for very slow business as a result of consumer worries about the economy. But now it appears that, overall, sales ran 5% to 10% ahead of last season. Though the actual value of goods and goodies sold was probably little more than in 1978, after inflation is figured in, the steep slippage that many economists feared did not occur.

Early on, crowds of shoppers were thin, so many stores launched sales or devised promotional gimmicks. The May Co. in Cleveland offered its credit customers $1,000 gift certificates for $900. At a tony branch of Garfinckel's in Washington, D.C., shoppers were culled off the street by a dinner-jacketed pianist stationed at the main entrance who played Cole Porter songs on a baby grand. Late in the month, however, sales picked up smartly almost everywhere. Several stores--Rich's in Atlanta, Hudson's in Detroit, Bloomingdale's in Manhattan--toted up record one-day sales on the Saturday before Christmas.

In this time of economic malaise, however, buyers went heavily for high-quality, high-priced items, which meant that the more expensive stores did the best. Sears and other chains with a budget-conscious clientele found demand weak. At the Clothesline chain of boutiques in Chicago's inner city, sales were down by 25% compared with last Christmas.

Among this season's hot sellers were timesaving microwave ovens and keep-warm items like sweaters and down jackets. Jewelry was a big seller, especially baubles made of silver and gold. Electronic games were popular, as had been expected. But one oldtime favorite fared particularly well: a line of overstuffed bears, called Pot Bellies, made in Korea and priced as high as $33. Manhattan's Saks Fifth Avenue was nearly cleaned out of the little cuddlies this Christmas, bringing the store's total number sold for the year to 20,000.

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