Bill Dreher Last Quotations

There has been real concern for the last several months about hurricanes, about consumer sentiment, about gasoline inflation hurting consumer spending,

Consumers were not in the holiday spirit up until the last week of the holiday season, when there was a mad rush for the store. And the big unknown is the result of that game of chicken, where shoppers waited until the last minute to get the best bargains and retailers held off.

Any retailer who could not surpass expectations last month has to have company-specific problems. September was simply a stellar month.

They've learned the lessons from last year and are intent upon not repeating the same mistakes.

Clearly the last 10 days before Christmas were very strong and allowed retailers to achieve their sales plans for the month despite the lack of aggressive promotions we saw in 2002.