Winter’s toll on retailers includes high snow removal bills

New York -- It’s no secret that the past winter took a heavy toll on retailers, with bitterly cold weather and snow storms keeping customers at home and sales down. But the snow also had a negative impact on retailers in other ways, as Kohl’s Corp. revealed Thursday on its quarterly conference with analysts.



Answering a question about the chain’s less-than-stellar results in February, Kohl’s chairman and CEO Kevin Mansell dismissed the idea that there was anything amiss with the chain’s marketing efforts. Instead, he said it was “functionally a low traffic month that was heavily hindered and hampered in certain parts of the country by weather.”



CFO Wesley McDonald agreed, and then added this observation: “We spent $5 million more on snow removal in February,” he said. “So that was probably the biggest issue.”