Second only to Christmas, back to school is the most important indicator of the annual retail climate, revealing whether or not the industry has some solid footing. The following graphic is a comprehensive look at the back to school economy for 2010 which shows slow but steady growth since last year’s dismal numbers.
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click for larger graphic
via Permuto
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Dollar depreciation leads to higher inflation and ultimately forces foreign creditors to question their rationale and indeed their sanity for continuing purchases of U.S. Treasuries." -Bill Gross
Signs continue that European markets are getting tired. The Spanish and Italian stock markets, big beneficiaries of the sharp decline in their bond yields over the past few months are falling to the lowest since Feb 1. The European bank index is at a 1 1/2 week low after earnings reports from Commerzbank and Credit Ag (RBS bouncing although reporting weaker than expected earnings) were disappointing. This market action is in spite of the German IFO business confidence figure which rose to a 7 month high coming in a touch above expectations and Italian consumer confidence which bounced more than...
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September 15th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
the projections for 2010 are dreamy optimistic; since this is mid-sept right in the middle of back-to-school and a retail stall then where do you think the actuals are going to look like ?
The only category that has this high of growth rate is tuition !
September 15th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Nassau County here Barry, A bit south of you on the north shore though. 2 kids in public school. The REQUIRED to buy list came home early this year for both kids. Excluding the $180 calculator they wanted us to buy (I did not buy it), the list for school demanded (I mean asked for) school supplies cost us $122.63. That is for 2 kids and one is in elementary school.
Sorry, but that’s a joke.
September 15th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
where are the ‘per Student’ #’s on ‘Spending’ ?
and, how about some “Cash” v. “Credit/Debt”–Breakdowns ?
~~
“The following graphic is a comprehensive look..”
com·pre·hen·sive (kmpr-hnsv)
adj.
1. So large in scope or content as to include much: a comprehensive history of the revolution.
2. Marked by or showing extensive understanding: comprehensive knowledge.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/comprehensive
September 15th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
I am constantly amazed at how the retail industries seem to think that consumer spending should go up every year.
Why? Are there more children? Are there more children going to school? Is it the same number of children and they are spending more? Is that due to inflation in this particular category of goods, or are the prices of these goods increasing faster than inflation? Is the spending being done with cash or credit?
If spending is going up (or down) on a per student, price-adjusted basis, then why?
September 15th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
“The following graphic is a comprehensive look at the back to school economy for 2010 which shows slow but steady growth since last year’s dismal numbers.”
Every graph I’m looking at shows just a “projection” going forward. Are those the “hard numbers?” How much % error is in those numbers. I suppose the most telling graph, which merited a blurb from the Permuto guy is the continued increase in using the internet more to shop/research. When I see stats like that, all I see is more deflationary pressures coming. i.e. Why are there any book stores anymore? Maybe larger…with the Kindle, etc. why will there be paper books by the next decade?
Also….of interest is that fact that electronics is the biggest “spend” category. That seems incredibly difficult to categorize….
Thanks for the graph BR…sort of interesting….
September 15th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
Seems like Permuto lifted stale spending “data” from the NRF website and prettied it up. Who cares what shoppers claimed they’d be doing when polled back in early July anyway? And as far as I can tell, they didn’t even do a good job of transcribing the numbers:
“Total spending on back to college merchandise is expected to reach $33.77 billion. … Combined K-12 and college spending will reach $55.12 billion, serving as the second biggest consumer spending event for retailers behind the winter holidays.” NRF press release 7/15/10
Have no idea where their $45.81B for college or $67.2B for total BTS comes from. And the $41.2B for college in 2009, a 30+% increase over 2008? Right. Even for a survey, that data looks like garbage.
September 15th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
The rising number of people who do their back to school shopping online is structurally interesting. If nothing else, it is good news for retail productivity and bad news for retail employment and your local stationery store. What has happened to agricultural, mining and manufacturing jobs is now happening to service jobs. At some point we are going to need a new excuse for giving people, other than billionaires, money, or we can expect our economy to grind to a halt.
September 15th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
I can’t even count all the backpacks and ring binders that are laying around my house. This year I bought loose leaf paper, and four 3 subject notebooks and told the kid to look through his room and recycle and reuse the other stuff. Remember less can be more sometimes.
September 16th, 2010 at 1:31 am
“…looking for free shipping.”
….because if the store says it’s free, it must be! Who do they think pays for the free shipping?
September 16th, 2010 at 1:33 am
If nothing else, it is good news for retail productivity and bad news for retail employment and your local stationery store.
I think Walmart ate those stationery stores a few years ago
September 16th, 2010 at 2:59 am
Ok, I did the back-to-school shopping around here for three elementary-school kids. I have some observations. First, the schools increase the crap that parents must buy every single year, and this year was particularly pronounced. While I laughed when some idiot at the NYT discovered that the schools ask for disinfecting wipes and kleenex — which they have since my kids first went to day care — this year they added a few items that were different. We were already ponying up sticky notes (obviously for the teachers rather than the kids), the aforementioned wipes and kleenex, ziploc bags, and more pencils than any kid can possibly use during the course of a school year (at least 2 dozen per kid). THIS year they added two reams of copy paper per kid, a half box of red pens, and started demanding that the wipes be “unscented and environmentally correct.” Also the number and size of glue sticks requested is INSANE. For three kids, I was requested to buy 22 (4 oz) glue sticks altogether. I’m sorry, that’s crazy – and costs about $70 if you buy them retail.
So if you are wondering how they can blithely project increased back-to-school spending every single year, I have some data points for you to consider.
Second, I got spectacular deals on school supplies last year. I walked away with less than $100 in stuff for all three kids. Granted, I save up the wipes and kleenex and bags I know I need from coupon purchases during the year — those are practically free after coupon if you time it right. But the sales last year were fantastic. While I can readily appreciate that they can’t do that all the time, what they did this year was crappy: they spread the good sale items out over at least a month, and you had to make repeated trips to the store. In short, they worked very hard to drive traffic and collateral damage this year — very hard. They were going to improve same-store sales if it killed them. This means that the same haggard mom had to go to one of the big boxes (or three) more than three or four times to get a decent price on all items. Watch for those numbers – they are artificially inflated.
As far as clothes and shoes, you can’t do a lot when their feet grow – it’s off to the Stride Rite for you. But clothing-wise, I can report that hand-me-downs are back with a vengeance. We have always traded clothes with my family, and a few like-minded neighbors, but I see this practice increasing in my very expensive neighborhood. I did have to buy a ridiculous number of new pairs of socks and some underpants – darn growing children. Otherwise, pretty much everything they have will be held over from last year or handed down.
Life in the trenches. But I do think that they will show an increase in the shopping volume this year, due not to “green shoots” but the measures I outline above. My 2 cents (well, more like five cents – sorry for the long post).