I’ve measured typical retail sales in January to be roughly 8.3% of the year’s total take.
When compared to December (the previous month) we’d expect to see January retail sales down around 16.2%. Not as bad as you’d expect but driven by due giftcard spending. (It usually gets steadily worse and bottoms out in May then takes a U-turn in June with “Dads and Grads”).
The latest from MarketingDaily (http://bit.ly/5hst2W) reports on JD Power’s comments on January sales in the Auto industry. Things look down. We’ll see how much this is a bellwether for other sales sectors.