Chains Post Erratic Sales For January Retailers Blame Weather For Uneven Performance

Blizzards and arctic temperatures made for an erratic performance in the retail business during January. But the sales figures released Thursday, which closed out a difficult fiscal year, did contain a few positive notes.

While brutal weather in the East and Midwest kept shoppers out of stores, merchants were largely able to shrug off lost business because January is one of the least significant months in the retail calendar. Consumers generally spend the month assessing the damage they did to their finances at Christmas time, while retailers are clearing away leftover winter merchandise.

For some retailers, January sales were strong despite the bad weather. That came as a relief after a generally lousy holiday season. Dayton Hudson Corp.’s Target stores had a good month, and Gap Inc. continued to show a rebound after a mostly difficult 1995.

Thomas J. Tashjian, a retailing analyst with Montgomery Securities Inc. in San Francisco, said January’s results showed a strengthening of consumer spending in California. “With the weakness in the Northeast, it becomes more obvious” that California, which lagged behind the rest of the country in recovering from the 1990-91 recession, is catching up, he said.

But many retailers were still struggling. Sales fell at J.C. Penney Co. Inc. as many apparel retailers remained in what has become a years-long slump.

And Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest retailer, posted a modest gain, having not returned to the more robust pace it enjoyed for much of last year. Tashjian said competition in the discount store business is hurting many retailers in that segment.

January is the final month of the fiscal year for most retailers. Wal-Mart increased its lead over all other merchants, closing out the year with $93.6 billion in total sales. No other storeowner comes close to Wal-Mart, which became the nation’s No. 1 retailer five years ago. The second-largest retailer, Sears, Roebuck and Co., had $36.37 billion in sales in the just-ended year.