Budgets/Spending/Market Size

Washington, D.C. -- Slower-than-expected growth during the first half of the year caused the National Retail Federation to lower its retail sales forecast for 2014. NRF said it now expects sales will grow 3.6% in 2014, down from its earlier forecast of 4.1%. The group joined other industry experts in forecasting a pick-up in activity in the next five months.  

The National Retail Federation has joined the growing chorus of voices expecting a surge in consumer spending during the next five months to compensate for a weak start to the year.

The economic trend for some time now has been a slow and meandering recovery. Despite improving consumer confidence numbers, a surprising first quarter GDP decline of 2.9% speaks to that uncertainty. Retail analysts and observers have a tendency to blame the weather whenever we have a bad economic quarter or when retail sales are unexpectedly sluggish, but I tend to be a little dubious of those explanations. Last winter was definitely rough enough to impact spending, but I don’t think it’s enough to explain the continued issues into the spring.

New York - The back-to-school (BTS) shopping season is already in full swing, with over one-third (37%) of consumers having begun their shopping – up from the 29% who started at this time last year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. And roughly 90% of households indicated a selection of brick-and-mortar retail as a shopping venue for the BTS season.

Austin, Texas – Parents spend, on average, $659 on school-related costs throughout the year per family. According to a survey from digital coupon provider RetailMeNot, 67% of parents start their back-to-school shopping by the end of July, which is down slightly from 2013 (71%).

Stamford, Conn. -- General Electric is spinning off its Synchrony Financial consumer credit business in an initial public offering (IPO) and seeking a market valuation as high as $22 billion. Synchrony offers store credit cards for retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and J.C. Penney Co.

Washington, D.C. - Families this summer will spend slightly more on back-to-school items than they did in 2013. According to NRF’s 2014 Back-to-School Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, the average family with children in grades K-12 will spend $669.28 on apparel, shoes, supplies and electronics, up 5% from $634.78 in 2013.

Burlington Stores has updated its comparable store sales guidance for the second quarter ending Aug. 2 and launched a debt refinancing transaction.

Based on the company’s results quarter to date and its estimates for the remainder of July, comparable store sales for the quarter are expected to increase between 3% and 4% — not as much as last year’s second quarter comparable-stores sales increase of 7.8%, but better than its previous estimates of 2% to 3%.