Weather, Late Easter Slow Down Retail Sales Falloff Triggers Flurry Of Promotions

It was a dull gray March for the nation’s retailers, which reported disappointing sales.

Between cold and rainy weather in some areas and a belated Easter that gives people more time to shop - many consumers had no reason to visit the stores last month. Several retailers said in reporting March results Thursday that business fell below expectations.

Industry analysts said it was hard to get a handle on the underlying health of the business, if weather and calendar quirks were factored out.

“The environment is pretty sluggish and retailers are promoting pretty aggressively to generate sales,” said Rick Nelson of Duff & Phelps in Chicago.

But analyst Steven Kernkraut of the investment firm Bear, Stearns & Co. said the retail business is generally good. “I think that it would be wrong to assume that consumer spending is going into the tank,” he said.

Jeffrey Edelman, an analyst with C.J. Lawrence Inc., said there were signs that sales of women’s apparel, which have been stagnant for more than two years, were picking up.

Most retailers and securities analysts consider March and April sales together when assessing how well the overall industry and individual companies are doing.

Many of the sales figures released Thursday looked considerably weaker than they actually were because of the late Easter. Still, results were considered disappointing.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest retailer, reported numbers well off the discounter’s usual strong pace. The company said business dropped off during the last week of March.

Dayton Hudson Corp. warned investors it would post lower first-quarter earnings because sales were significantly below expectations at its Mervyn’s clothing division. However, the first quarter is the least significant in the retail business.

If nothing else, the March results show consumers have not budged from their cautious approach to shopping - if they don’t need something, they just don’t buy it. This trend has been in place for years.

Retailing stocks were generally lower after the sales figures were announced. Dayton Hudson was one of the bigger losers, with its stock off $2.12 1/2 to $68.87 1/2 a share trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Wal-Mart said sales from stores open at least a year rose 2.2 percent from last March, while total sales were up 11.4 percent.

Sales from stores open at least a year, known as same-store sales, are considered the most accurate measure of a retailer’s strength. They exclude the results of newer stores, where sales tend to be unusually high. Same-store sales also exclude results from stores closed over the past year.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. said same-store sales advanced 2.3 percent and overall sales rose 3.7 percent.

Kmart Corp. said same-store sales rose 4.3 percent, while overall business was up 7 percent.

Dayton Hudson said same-store sales dropped 4.7 percent while overall business was up 0.2 percent.

J.C. Penney Co. Inc. said samestore sales at its flagship stores fell 5.5 percent, while total sales, including its drugstore and catalog operations, fell 4.4 percent.