Retailers unveiled a trove of fresh seasonal promotions Friday, as they try to coax sales from reticent shoppers whose holiday cheer has been tempered by inflation and worries over a softening economy.
“Black Friday,” the unofficial start of the US holiday shopping season, announced itself with the annual day-after-Thanksgiving deluge of online promotions and early store openings.
But industry experts have been cautious about this year’s prospects, in light of price pressures that have exacerbated concerns about an oversupply of goods.
A year ago, retailers faced product shortfalls in the wake of shipping backlogs and factory closures related to Covid-19. To avert a repeat, the industry front-loaded its holiday imports this year, leaving it vulnerable to oversupply at a time when consumers are cutting back.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
“Supply shortages was yesterday’s problem,” said Neil Saunders, managing director for GlobalData Retail, a consultancy. “Today’s problem is having too much stuff.”
Saunders said retailers have made progress in reducing excess inventories, but oversupply will mean deep discounts in many categories, including electronics, home improvement and apparel.
Online shoppers spent $5.3 billion on Thanksgiving Day itself, according to an Adobe report early Friday, up 2.9 percent from a year ago.
Higher costs for gasoline and household staples like meat and cereal are a nationwide issue, and they do not burden everyone equally.
“The lower incomes are definitely hit worst by the higher inflation,” said Claire Li, senior analyst at Moody’s. “People have to spend on the essential items.”
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
Diminishing savings
Leading forecasts from Deloitte and the National Retail Federation project a single-digit percentage rise in sales, but this is unlikely to exceed the inflation rate.
Adobe has forecast an overall holiday sales increase of 2.5 percent, less than a third of the level from last year. Besides inflation, Adobe cited higher Federal Reserve interest rates and an uptick in brick-and-mortar shopping as factors.
European countries like Britain and France have been marking Black Friday for a few years now too, but with soaring inflation, merchants there face a similar dilemma.
“Retailers are desperate for some spending cheer but the worry is that it could turn out to be more of a Bleak Friday,” said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter.
US shoppers have remained resilient throughout the pandemic, often spending more than expected even when consumer sentiment surveys suggest they are in a gloomy mood.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
Part of the reason has been the unusually robust state of savings, with many households banking government pandemic aid payments at a time of reduced consumption due to virus restrictions.
But that cushion is starting to whittle away. After hitting $2.5 trillion in excess savings in mid-2021, the benchmark fell to $1.7 trillion in the second quarter, according to Moody’s.
Accompanying this drop has been a rise in credit card debt visible in Federal Reserve data and anecdotally described by chains that also report more purchases made with food stamps.
Mixed picture
Recent earnings reports from retailers paint a mixed picture on consumer health.
Target stood on the downcast side, pointing to a sharp decline in shopping activity in late October, potentially portending a weak holiday season.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
The big-box chain expects a “very promotional” holiday season, said Chief Executive Brian Cornell.
“We’ve had a consumer who has been dealing with very stubborn inflation for quarter after quarter now,” Cornell said on a conference call with analysts.
He added that customers are “shopping very carefully on a budget.”
But Lowe’s, another big US chain specializing in home-improvement, offered a different view, describing the same late-October period as “strong.”
“We are not seeing anything that feels or looks like a trade down or consumer pullback,” said Lowe’s Chief Executive Marvin Ellison.
Advertisement
20250407_mh_renta_728x90
20250301_vacunacion_vph-728x90
20231124_etesal_728x90_1
20230601_agenda_primera_infancia_728X90
domfuturo_netview-728x90
20240604_dom_728x90
CEL
Consumers like Charmaine Taylor, who checks airline websites frequently, are staying vigilant.
Taylor, who works in child care, has had her travel plans thwarted due to exorbitant plane ticket prices — and she is unsure of how much she can spend on family this year.
“I’m trying to give them some little gifts,” she said at a park in Harlem earlier this week. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to. Inflation is hitting pretty hard.”
The Pope’s funeral procession through the center of Rome worries the Italian authorities
The complexity of the transfer of Pope Francis’ coffin through the center of Rome, from St. Peter’s Vatican to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he will be buried, is the main concern for the Italian authorities, the head of Civil Protection, Fabio Ciciliano, acknowledged on Thursday.
That part of the device, which will take place on Saturday after the funeral, presents important logistical, infrastructure and security challenges, the official admitted at a press conference, in which he also said that the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel before, about 61,000, will increase in the coming hours.
On Saturday, after the funeral, his body will be taken in a vehicle in a solemn passage to the Roman basilica of Santa María La Mayor, to be buried in a chapel, as the Argentine pontiff arranged in life, which will collapse the center of the Italian capital.
“I remember that the burial ceremony will be a private ceremony, while immediately after the faithful will be given the opportunity to reach the side of their holiness, and obviously the sustained concentration of faithful must be taken into great consideration,” said Ciciliano.
The route of this funeral procession, which will extend over six kilometers, will be analyzed today in a meeting by those responsible for the organization, who are carrying out a “complete evaluation”.
Ciciliano focused on the exceptional fact that Francisco’s death has coincided with the Jubilee year, and that this is also a time when Rome is usually full of tourists, so it is difficult to estimate the number of people who will attend to follow the funeral.
Despite warning that parallels cannot be established with the death of John Paul II in 2005, Ciciliano reiterated that “we are estimating around 200,000 people, although we do not know if they will be deployed in St. Peter’s Square or along the funeral procession” to Santa María la Mayor.
Meanwhile, the number of faithful who will pass through the burning chapel of Pope Francis, which until 1:00 p.m. this Thursday already amounted to 61,000, will rise significantly in the next few hours, until Friday it closes at 19.00 (17.00 GMT) for the ceremony of closing the coffin before the funeral on Saturday, he anticipated.
The person in charge drew attention to the significant drop in temperatures at night, so he called on the faithful to dress like “an onion” to be able to add or remove layers as needed.
Regarding the arrival of new faithful in Rome, he said that there are 260,000 seats available to travel by train, and that on the day of the funeral about 500 buses to the Italian capital are expected to arrive.
“There will be state, commercial and private flights that will arrive at Fiumicino and Ciampino airports. We have also maintained Pratica di Mare as an airfield,” he added.
He also referred to the reception of the hundreds of world leaders and authorities who will be in Rome to attend the funeral, including the president of the United States or the kings of Spain, which he considered “very complex.”
The preparations “are being developed in close collaboration with the Prefecture of Rome for those aspects related to security, since there are elements that overlap,” he said.
This difficulty grows due to the fact that after the funerals most of these leaders will return immediately, but others prefer to stay in the city.
After the funeral, the second phase of the Civil Protection deployment will be activated, which includes the conclave to elect the new pope, when the forecasts point to an even greater number of faithful, which will also coincide with other massive events such as the final of the Soccer Cup on May 14.
A group of the poor and a delegation of migrants will participate in the funeral and burial of the pope on Saturday
A group of poor and needy and a delegation of migrants and rescuers will be present at the funeral and burial of Pope Francis this Saturday, April 26, as a last tribute to the pontiff, who was always close to the most disadvantaged and homeless people.
“A group of poor and needy people will be present on the steps that lead to the Papal Basilica of Santa María la Mayor to pay the last tribute to Pope Francis before the burial of the coffin,” the Vatican reported in a statement on Thursday.
The Arab League supports Hamas handing over control of Gaza and weapons to the Palestinian Authority
The Arab League expressed on Thursday its support for the Hamas Islamist group handing over control of the Gaza Strip to the Government of the Palestinian National Authority (ANPA), of President Mahmud Abbas, who assured that he must be the only one who controls weapons and represents the Palestinians before the international community.
The pan-Arab organization expressed its position on Thursday in a statement issued after the Arab ministerial meeting held on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, coinciding with a claim by Abbas that the ANP assumes political control of Gaza, and that Hamas releases the 59 Israeli hostages it still holds and lay down their arms.
“The Council of the Arab League affirmed its support for President Mahmoud Abbas’ vision regarding the importance of achieving national (Palestinian) unity based on the commitment to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” the main member of the ANP that governs in small areas of the occupied West Bank, said the statement of the organization composed of 22 states.
In the note, the agency avoided mentioning Hamas by name, although it stressed that the PLO is the “only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, and invited all Palestinian factions to “comply with the political program and international obligations” of the ANP.
He also insisted that the different Palestinian factions “comply with the principle of a (only) system (of government), a law and a legitimate weapon, and allow the Government (of the ANP) to assume the responsibilities of governance in Gaza within the framework of the political and geographical unity of the Palestinian territory occupied (by Israel) in 1967”.
On the other hand, the statement “categorically rejected any form of displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, under any name, circumstance or justification, considering this part of the crime of genocide” against the inhabitants of the strip, where more than 51,000 people died in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
The Arab Foreign Ministers expressed, on the other hand, their support for the conference that France and Saudi Arabia plan to hold next June under the auspices of the UN to support the “two-state solution”, one Palestinian next to the Israeli.
They also showed their support for the Egyptian plan, supported last March by Arab and Islamic countries, for the reconstruction of Gaza, and “urging countries and financial institutions to quickly provide the financial support necessary for its implementation.”
Hamas has controlled Gaza since its militiamen expelled the forces of the ANP Government from the Strip in 2007, controlled by the secular group Fatah, also from Abbas and majority within the PLO.
The enmity between Hamas and Fatah resides, in addition to ideological differences, in the discrepancies that when facing the defense of a Palestinian State, since while Islamists advocate armed struggle and “resistance” against the Israeli occupation, the ANP opts for politics and negotiations.
