Parsing The Numbers

by Poornima Apte

Winter holidays win

Over the past few years, holiday sales have been steadily increasing albeit at a lower rate. With the economy in the worst shape it has been for a while, this year promises to be particularly challenging and exactly how much of a growth in sales, if any, we will register for '08 remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, a significant chunk of consumer holiday spending is devoted to the winter holidays. Also interesting to note is that specialty stores are popular places to shop at for a large chunk of customers. It's time to get ready.

Time to hire

A large percentage of customers start shopping in late October to early November. The anticipated increase in business means you need to staff more hands. Even if 2006 showed a drop in the overall number of holiday hires, you can see that there is a consistently higher number of employees hired during the winter holidays as opposed to the rest of the retail year (January-October).

As is customary during the holidays, customers spend significant chunks of money on gifts for others so make sure your staff is ready to come up with ideas for a wide assortment of people.