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ICSC Cuts Holiday Sales Prediction

NEW YORK CITY-The trade group's research department says it will be the worst holiday season on record.

By Debra Hazel | Updated on December 05, 2008

NEW YORK CITY-Scratch at least one prediction of a modest increase in holiday retail sales. After a November performance that the International Council of Shopping Centers Retail industry dubbed “an awful beginning to the holiday season,” the association has revised its holiday sales forecast from a 1% same-store sales increase to flat to down 1%, the weakest performance on record.

Comparable-store sales for the four-week fiscal month of November declined 2.7% from the same month last year, its worst showing in more than 35 years, according to ICSC’s Chain Store Sales Trends.

“To be sure, there were special factors for this degree of weakness–namely, a calendar shift (ICSC Research estimates was a drag of between 1.5 and 2 percentage points on aggregate year-over-year percentage change in sales) and declining gasoline prices lowering wholesale club sales (which had a negligible aggregate effect),” wrote Michael P. Niemira, ICSC chief economist and director of research. “But the underlying trend was best described by one retailer who said the holiday season got off to a difficult start. Indeed.”

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