Holiday Shopping Off to Solid Start

Monday, November 27th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) â€” The first weekend of the holiday shopping season turned out to be a pleasant surprise for worried retailers: The consumers who crowded malls and logged onto e-commerce sites spent more than expected as they snapped up the season's must-have items.

Sweaters, coats and other apparel items, bouncing back from a months-long slump, were the top sellers in stores and online. In fact, clothing turned out to be the most popular category on the Internet on Friday, followed by consumer electronics. Scooters and robotic pets were the big standouts in toys.

``Sales looked pretty decent,'' said Michael P. Niemira, vice president of the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi on Sunday, estimating that the weekend's sales will be about 5 to 6 percent higher than last year. ``It's a good start to the season. But where it goes from here remains to be seen.''

The solid sales followed months of sluggish business for many retailers, but the Thanksgiving weekend receipts were the result of hard work on the part of merchants. Faced with an overall drop in consumer spending, retailers began discounting earlier than usual and focused more on what they expect will be the hot items.

Sears, Roebuck and Co., for example, is holding its ``Best Prices of the Season'' campaign in early December, instead of after the holidays.

A combination of stock market volatility, high interest rates, and rising fuel prices have made consumers cut back on things they don't really need. Analysts say the unresolved presidential election has contributed to Americans' uncertainty.

Despite the strong start to the season, retailers are nervous about consumers like David Penner, a 58-year-old teacher from Andover, Mass., who plans to cut his holiday budget because he is spending $100,000 in home renovations. They also want Eleanor Jaick, a 55-year-old resident of Florham Park, N.J., who was just browsing on Saturday at New Jersey's Short Hills Mall, to get excited about the chunky sweaters and leather coats being offered this season.

However, she said, ``there's nothing out there to buy in fashion.''

Business was strong online over the weekend. Yahoo! Shopping saw its number of transactions double on Friday from a year ago, while Kmart's Bluelight.com, officially launched earlier this month, got an unexpected surprise with a 50 percent to 60 percent gain for the weekend, compared to last weekend, Mark Goldstein, chief executive officer, said.

But retailers were still cautious, well aware that there is nearly a month left to the season.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, while seen as a barometer of consumers' willingness to spend for the holiday, isn't necessarily a good indicator of how retailers will perform for the entire season.

In the past few years, Friday has accounted for less than 10 percent of holiday sales, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. But the week after Christmas is becoming more important.

``I expect a pattern to continue similar to the last couple of years,'' said Terry Lundgren, president of Federated Department Stores Inc., foreseeing a lull for the next couple of weeks and then another jump closer to Christmas.

``We won't know how it will turn out until late in December,'' he said.

Internet retailers see the next week or so as critical. Online buying got off to a one week late start, picking up the week of Nov. 12, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings Holiday E-Commerce Index. And although traffic from online home users jumped 27 percent on Friday compared to the rest of the week, the momentum needs to continue.

``Traffic started out slow, and we need to make up for lost time,'' said Sean Kaldor, vice president of e-commerce for Nielsen/Net. ``Online companies can't be stuck with all the last-minute shipments.'' He said data for Saturday and Sunday will not be available until Thursday.

At traditional retailers, the come-ons worked, with hundreds of shoppers mobbing such stores as K-B Toys, Best Buy and Wal-Mart Friday to snap up early bird specials, from $29.99 scooters and $14.99 robotic dogs to $59 VCRs.

The Taubman Centers Inc., which owns and manages 27 shopping centers in 12 states, reported most of their tenants had sales gains in the mid-to-high single digits on Friday. On Saturday, customer traffic slowed a bit, according to Karen MacDonald, spokeswoman for the Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based company.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said sales at its domestic Wal Mart stores, Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets totaled $1.1 billion on Friday, a mid-single digit gain from a year ago. Sears' sales were up 8 percent on Friday over last year, and the entire weekend's sales are expected to be up more than 10 percent, said Tom Nicholson, a company spokesman.

Within the first couple of hours on Friday, Sears sold out of all 127,000 Poo-Chi robotic dogs, whose prices were slashed in half to $14.99, Nicholson said. Other big hits this past weekend were leather coats, tools and appliances.

Michael Gould, chairman of Bloomingdale's, said in an interview the strong sales gains were fed by coats, boots, sweaters, and fur. Meanwhile, Christina Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Saks Fifth Avenue, said in a statement Friday's traffic was ``solid and continued steadily throughout the Thanksgiving weekend.''

Kaldor of Nielsen Ratings noted that the big online winners on Friday were the brick and mortar retailers with Web sites, such J.C. Penney and Wal-Mart. That category had a 49 percent increase in online traffic, while retailers that operate solely online had a 26 percent gain.