Initial numbers suggest it was a Merry Christmas for retailers
Posted Jan 6, 2016 7:12 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As Christmas shoppers wait for those bills to roll in, retailers are starting to get an idea how much traffic they saw over the holiday season and so far, it doesn’t look like the economic downturn had much of an impact.
Most malls won’t have final sales totals until later this month but Darren Milne, general manager at Market Mall, says things are looking good.
“Overall, sales throughout the entire year have actually been up over what they were last year, and so while we haven’t seen finally sales figures for December, our expectation is that trend will continue,” he said.
There was a decrease in overall traffic at Market Mall this year, but Milne adds that was being compared against a year when they still had Target in the mall, so the drop was expected.
Chinook Centre figures the number of shoppers was up about two per cent in December.
James Moller, General Manager at CrossIron Mills, says their traffic was up about one per cent, thanks in large part to retailers themselves.
“They seemed to have more products and they seemed to have deeper discounts and sales promotions going on,” he said, adding he’s never seen such a concerted effort to get people in stores, and he expects many retailers will be rewarded for their hard work.
