For a while, it looked as if the worries plaguing ordinary Americans wouldn't trouble shoppers with well-padded wallets.
No more. Major retailers that recorded better-than-expected sales last month warned about flat results or worse this month -- upscale chains included.
Luxury retailer Saks Inc. led the charge by reporting an exceptionally strong 25.7% gain in November same-store sales, a key measure of a merchant's health, but then immediately said December sales would be either flat or "modestly negative."
The main reason for the huge divergence: A quirk in retailers' reporting calendars gave them a full extra week of revenues last month compared with November 2006, propping up the month's numbers and shrinking estimates for December.
Higher-end stores finally are being dinged by customers' response to high gasoline prices, rising mortgage payments, faltering home values, the gyrating stock market and fears of a recession. "We've seen the weakness broaden out," said Michelle Tan, a UBS analyst.
It's not the wealthiest Americans who are affected but the merely well-off, people who can shop in the swankiest stores but not in all departments.
"The new customer of Saks and Neiman -- what they call the 'aspirational customer' -- is definitely pulling back," said John Lahman, an analyst with KDP Investment Advisors.
A growing number of chains are noting the slowdown in their sales and earnings reports, including Nordstrom Inc., Neiman Marcus Group and Coach Inc. One problem for these stores is that people who last year were dumping JCPenney for Macy's or ditching Kohl's to shop at Nordstrom have retreated, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for NPD Group.
"Everybody was moving upward," he said. "That's not happening now."
It certainly isn't for Lynne Blair, 29, a nurse who swore off Nordstrom, Saks, Neiman Marcus and the entire Fashion Island shopping center in Newport Beach after she and her husband bought a new home in La Mirada.
"No more Nordstrom," she said outside a Kohl's in Huntington Beach. "It's so sad."
Retailers have been bracing themselves. Traffic at the major retail container ports dropped below last year's levels for the fourth month in a row in November as merchants managed inventories in anticipation of a restrained holiday shopping season, according to the monthly Port Tracker report from the National Retail Federation and Global Insight.
