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Profit Falls 13% at Target, and It Lowers Expectations

August 21, 2013 by

The retailer on Wednesday lowered its annual profit forecast after reporting a 13 percent drop in second-quarter profit, as its expansion into Canada — its first foray outside the United States — has proved more challenging than it previously thought.

But the company is also contending with mixed economic signals that have caused it and its rivals, like Walmart and Macy’s, to temper their forecasts for the remainder of the year. While jobs are easier to obtain and the housing market is gaining momentum, these improvements have not been enough to persuade most Americans, who are facing stagnant wage growth, to spend more freely.

“As we monitor the economy and consumer sentiment, we continue to see a mix of signals in which emerging optimism is balanced with continuing challenges,” Gregg W. Steinhafel, Target’s chairman, president and chief executive, said on an earnings call with investors.

Target earned $611 million, or 95 cents a share, in the quarter ending Aug. 3, compared with $704 million, or $1.06 a share, in the period a year earlier.

Excluding certain items related to its expansion into Canada, the retailer earned $1.19 a share.

Total revenue reached $17.12 billion, up 2 percent from $16.78 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected earnings of 96 cents a share on revenue of $17.28 billion, according to FactSet.

Revenue at stores open at least a year — a gauge of a retailer’s health — rose 1.2 percent. That was below the 1.9 percent analysts had expected. Its shares fell 3.6 percent on Wednesday, or $2.45, to $65.50.

Like Walmart, Target said that its customers continued to struggle with a 2 percentage-point increase in the Social Security payroll tax since Jan. 1. That means take-home pay for a household earning $50,000 a year has been cut by $1,000.

For the full year, Target now expects earnings per share to be at the low end of its previous guidance of $4.70 to $4.90. Target said that it expected its costs related to its Canadian expansion will depress earnings by 82 cents, up from its projected 45 cents a share. In May, the company trimmed its projections from the original outlook of $4.85 a share to $5.05, citing cautious shoppers. Analysts expect $4.29 a share for the full year.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/business/profit-falls-13-at-target-and-it-lowers-expectations.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Home Depot Credits Housing Recovery for 17% Jump in Earnings

August 20, 2013 by

The chief financial officer, Carol Tomé, said the company projected that “we are in the early stages of housing recovery” as it reported a 17 percent increase in earnings, to $1.8 billion. Sales in the second quarter grew 9.5 percent, to $22.5 billion.

Yet not all retailers saw lively home departments. J. C. Penney, which also reported earnings on Tuesday, said revenue dropped almost 12 percent for the quarter, in part because of lackluster sales in its recently revamped home departments. Its loss came in at $2.66 a share, far worse than analyst estimates of a loss of $1.22 a share.

The home departments at Penney are left over from the former chief executive Ron Johnson, who was terminated in April. Penney went ahead with his plans for upscale home boutiques, unveiling them in June, but said on Tuesday that they had performed badly.

Costly items like a $2,895 Jonathan Adler sofa and $72 Michael Graves wine decanters failed to provide a draw to the specially designed areas. And Mr. Johnson’s strategy had counted on Martha Stewart home boutiques as a major attraction — a notion that is still tied up in a legal battle among Penney, Macy’s and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

“The merchandising strategy was not resonating well with our core customer, and performance has been weaker than we had hoped,” the chief executive, Myron E. Ullman III, told investors on Tuesday. Sales at stores open at least a year, an important performance indicator, slid 11.9 percent in the quarter; Mr. Ullman said they would have declined only 9.5 percent were it not for the home stores.

“We expected home to improve, obviously, when the new store shops had opened, and quite the opposite happened,” he said. “We actually have less productivity in the new home stores than we do in the stores that didn’t get a home store.”

At Home Depot, every department posted positive comparable sales in the quarter, from gardening to maintenance to décor to kitchens.

Professionals — Home Depot’s term for contractors — and consumers both seemed to increase spending at the same rate, Ms. Tomé said.

“With home prices up, people are starting to view their homes as more of an investment and not an expense,” she said.

Some economists have suggested that only middle- and higher-income consumers, and investors buying properties, are experiencing the lift in the housing market. Ms. Tomé said that Home Depot’s customers tended to be wealthier by dint of the fact that they are homeowners.

She noted that investors, too, were probably spending at Home Depot.

“If you’re an investor group, be it a private equity firm or someone coming in from outside the United States, you’re not buying that property to sit on it, you’re buying that property to rent it — and you can’t rent it if it’s not in good shape.”

To that point, Home Depot’s installation business grew in the double digits in the quarter, she said. While that increase was not all investors, “the blanket comment that these investor groups wouldn’t spend money at Home Depot isn’t true.”

She said that one indicator — the number of items bought per visit — also increased, which suggested confidence.

“Items in a basket suggest a couple of things: one, that you’re not just living hand-to-mouth if you’re a pro, because we saw pros coming in and getting exactly what they need” in quarters past, she said. “For consumers, it means a bigger project, so I’m not just going to paint my room, but I’m going to paint my room and refloor my room.”

Penney executives vowed that they were moving on from the Ron Johnson era.

“We know where the problems are,” Mr. Ullman said. “There are no quick fixes to correct the errors of the past.”

While he said there were promising signs in back-to-school sales, Penney’s traffic was down 5.5 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, which suggests that Mr. Ullman’s early efforts in the last few months at restoring private labels and promotions are still not attracting customers.

The company has been leaning heavily on promotions. It increased circular counts by 150 percent in the first six weeks of the back-to-school period (defined as June 30 through Aug. 10) this year versus last year, and increased the number of products promoted via e-mail by about the same amount, according to the advertising analysis firm Market Track.

Another faltering retailer, Best Buy, turned in better-than-expected results on Tuesday, which were attributed to aggressive cost-cutting. Earnings came in at $266 million, up from $12 million a year earlier. Same-store sales were down 0.6 percent in the United States, and Best Buy said those would have been flat to slightly up were it not for the construction and introduction of specialized Samsung and Windows shops.

Revenue decreased slightly, to $9.3 billion, from $9.4 billion in the same quarter last year. And online sales grew 10.5 percent from a year ago, which analysts said was encouraging.

“The ongoing increases in online sales signal to us that the investments Best Buy has made are driving better performance,” Alan M. Rifkin, a Barclays analyst, wrote in a note to clients.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/business/home-depot-earnings-jump-17-fueled-by-housing-recovery.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Strong Retail Sales Bolster Economic Outlook

March 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans spent at the fastest pace in five months in February, pushing up retail sales by 1.1 percent from January. About half the increase reflected higher gasoline prices, but even excluding fuel purchases, retail sales rose 0.6 percent.

The report from the Commerce Department on Wednesday showed that Americans kept spending last month despite higher Social Security taxes that took effect this year.

Core retail sales, which exclude the volatile categories of purchases of gasoline, autos and building supplies, rose 0.4 percent in February compared with January.

Economists were encouraged by the stronger-than-expected gain in retail sales. Some said the increase means the economy may be growing faster in the January-March quarter than they had forecast.

“This all suggests that the hit to spending from the payroll tax cut and higher gasoline prices, which reduce the amount of cash available to spend on other items, hasn’t been too bad,” said Paul Dales, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. “The recent pickup in both employment and earnings growth bodes well for consumption growth later in the year, too.”

Auto sales rose 1.1 percent after a 0.4 percent January increase. The February gain was the biggest since December. Sales at gas stations surged 5 percent, the biggest advance since a 6 percent rise in August.

Sales at general merchandise stores, a category that includes major department stores such as Macy’s and big discount stores such as Walmart and Target, rose 0.5 percent in February. But the department store category as a whole fell 1 percent.

The solid increase in retail sales showed that Americans kept spending despite a payroll tax increase that has lowered take-home pay this year for most workers. A person earning $50,000 has about $1,000 less to spend in 2013. A household with two high-paid workers has up to $4,500 less.

The economy grew at a rate of only 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, but many analysts believe the American economy will grow a modest 2 percent this year.

In a separate report, the Commerce Department said businesses increased their inventories by 1 percent in January from December, an encouraging signal that they expect consumers will spend more this year. That increase is up from 0.3 percent growth in December and the biggest gain since May 2011.

Total business sales fell 0.3 percent in January after a slight 0.1 percent rise in December.

Retail inventories increased 1.5 percent. Wholesale inventories grew 1.2 percent, the biggest gain in 13 months. Inventories held by manufacturers rose 0.5 percent.

Finally, the Labor Department reported Wednesday that import prices rose 1.1 percent in February after a 0.6 percent gain the previous month. Fuel imports jumped 4.9 percent. Excluding fuel, import prices were flat.

Low import costs have helped hold down inflation in the United States. Even with the last two months of increases in oil costs, import prices have fallen 0.3 percent in the 12 months ending in February.

Export prices rose 0.8 percent in February from January, pushed up by higher prices for agricultural goods. In the past year, export prices have increased 1.5 percent, led by a 13.4 percent jump in farm goods.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/business/economy/us-retail-sales-jump.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

December 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Q. This one has been bothering me for nearly two years now, ever since Kraft rebranded its product line. Why does Snackwell’s have an apostrophe?

This appears to be grammatically incorrect and I can find no real basis for putting an apostrophe in the name.

A. I submitted your question, dear reader, to Kimberly Fontes, who is a spokeswoman in the East Hanover, N.J., office of Mondelez International, the company that sells Snackwell’s.

“We’ve looked into it, and haven’t found specific detail on why it is included, but can confirm that it has always been there,” Ms. Fontes writes in an e-mail. “Apologies to not have more detail on this one.”

It is possible that the search for the reason behind the apostrophe may be complicated by the number of times that Snackwell’s has changed corporate parents. When the brand was introduced in 1992, it was made by the Nabisco Biscuit Company division of the RJR Nabisco Holdings Corporation. The most recent change took place in October, when Kraft Foods spun off its global snacks business as Mondelez International, a separate and publicly traded company.

I would guess that the apostrophe is included to suggest or imply that someone named Snackwell came up with the brand, in the same way there are brands like Campbell’s and Macy’s based on people named Campbell and Macy.

Q. I’m writing about your post on the Media Decoder blog, describing how a complaint led the folks who make Peeps to withdraw a humorous holiday e-card that used the Yiddish word “shiksa” and showed a Peeps candy wearing a yarmulke.

If they had said “chick-sa,” it would have worked.

A. Thanks, dear reader, for the smile.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/business/media/q-and-a-with-stuart-elliott.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: ,

The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone on Black Friday

November 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Retailers are trying to lure shoppers away from the Internet, where they have increasingly been shopping to avoid Black Friday madness, and back to the stores. The bait is technological tools that will make shopping on the busiest day of the year a little more sane — and give shoppers an edge over their competition.

Those with smartphones in hand will get better planning tools, prices and parking spots. Walmart has a map that shows shoppers exactly where the top Black Friday specials can be found. A Mall of America Twitter feed gives advice on traffic and gifts, and the Macy’s app sends special deals for every five minutes a shopper stays in a store.

“The crazy mad rush to camp out and the crazy mad rush to hit the doorbusters have really made people think, ‘I’m just going to stay home on Black Friday,’ ” said Carey Rossi, editor in chief of ConsumerSearch.com, a review site. “This is going to invite some people back and say, ‘You know what? It doesn’t have to be that crazy.’ ”

Part of the retailers’ strategy is to slap back at online stores like Amazon.com, which last year used apps to pick off shoppers as they browsed in physical stores. But the stores are also recognizing that shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving need not require an overnight wait in line, a helmet and elbow pads. A smartphone gives shoppers enough of an edge.

“This takes away that frantic Black Friday anxiety,” said Lawrence Fong, co-founder of BuyVia, an app that sends people price alerts and promotions. “While there’s a sport to it, life’s a little too short.”

Denise Fouts, 45, who works repairing fire and water damage in Chandler, Ariz., is already using apps to prepare for Black Friday, including Shopkick, Target’s app and one called Black Friday. “There still are going to be the crowds, but at least I already know ahead of time what I’m going specifically for,” Ms. Fouts said.

Last week, Macy’s released an update to its app with about 300 Black Friday specials and their location. In the Herald Square store, for instance, the $49.99 cashmere sweater specials will be in the Broadway side of the fifth-floor women’s department.

“With the speed that people are shopping with on Black Friday, they need to be really efficient about how they’re spending their time,” said Jennifer Kasper, group vice president for digital media at Macy’s.

When shoppers keep the app open, Macy’s will start sending special deals to the phone every five minutes. The deals are not advertised elsewhere.

Walmart has had an app for several years, but recently introduced an in-store mode, which shows things like the current circular or food tastings when a shopper is near a certain location. Twelve percent of Walmart’s mobile revenue now comes from when a person is inside a store.

For Black Friday, the app will have a map of each store, with the precise location of the top sale items — so planners can determine the best way to run. “The blitz items are not where you think they would be, because for traffic reasons, maybe the hot game console is in the lawn and garden center,” said Gibu Thomas, senior vice president for mobile and digital for Walmart Global eCommerce.

Target is also testing a way-finding feature on its app at stores that include some in Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. If a shopper types in an item, the app will give its location.

Other app makers are betting that shoppers want apps that pull in information from a range of stores.

RedLaser, an eBay app, lets shoppers use their phones to compare prices and recently started using location data to give shoppers personalized promotions when they walk into stores, including items not on store shelves at Best Buy, for instance. RetailMeNot, which offers e-commerce coupons, now has offline coupons that will pop up on users’ cellphones when they step near 500 malls on Black Friday.

“Consumers are not going to download 40 different apps for 40 different stores,” said Cyriac Roeding, co-founder of Shopkick, a location-based app that gives shoppers points, redeemable for discounts or gifts, when they walk into stores or scan certain items.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/technology/the-shrewd-shopper-carries-a-smartphone-on-black-friday.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

You’re the Boss Blog: Can a Small Retailer Compete Online With the Big Boys?

December 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Site Analysis

What’s wrong with this Web site?

Little Dudes and Divas is a small business with some very big competition. Started seven years ago by Steve and Susan Karasanti, husband and wife, the company has three employees and sells clothes and accessories for infants and toddlers. Ninety percent of the sales come through the Web site, the rest through a newly opened brick-and-mortar store in Rockaway Park, N.Y., where the company is based.

“Our business model is based on keeping things fresh and selling only items which we feel are of the highest quality,” Steve Karasanti said. “If a new bag or print comes out, we want to be the first to have it on our site. You don’t want your customer to tell you that she saw something on another site from a manufacturer you carry.”

Can a company this small go head-to-head with such powerhouses as Macy’s, Nordstrom, Target, Babies “R” Us, and Diapers.com? It isn’t easy. “When we first started selling diaper bags and diaper bag accessories online, there was much less competition,” Mr. Karasanti said. “It’s extremely challenging to compete with such well-known Web sites that sell the same items as us. It’s very hard to compete with the bigger online companies on price, but we can compete by giving our customers personal attention.”

For example:

  • “If a customer wants to see a particular bag packed a certain way, we will make a video for them and post it.”
  • “We will spend time answering all your e-mails and sit on the phone with you until you feel comfortable ordering and all your questions have been answered.”
  • “We have customers that call us when they had a bad day and need to talk, but they still manage to pick our brains about that diaper bag they had their eye on.”
  • “We may have a store policy, but we always find a way to make a change to keep our customers happy.”

To get the word out, the Karasantis have increased their e-mail marketing efforts to relay sales and promotions to their customers. They have also invested heavily in search engine optimization. “We did extensive research on S.E.O.,” Mr. Karasanti said. “We only use methods that are considered ethical. Our site is filled with meaningful and unique content.”

The Karasantis say they review their Google Analytics reports constantly. “We started to concentrate more on reports and customer behavior while shopping,” Mr. Karasanti said. “These reports help you understand why a customer may click off a page, or why they abandoned their cart. You can tell things like what page gets the most clicks, what page customers see when they leave the site. If you have a page on the site that gets a lot of clicks, but customers don’t continue to shop and just leave, it’s a good indication that something is wrong. It could be a price error, a missing picture, a bad link, or the page is not loading correctly.”

The Karasantis have also been active in social media, using blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to try to drive more sales. They post frequently and respond quickly to visitor comments. “We use them to keep our customers current and give them reasons to keep coming back,” Mr. Karasanti said.

 

So why were they interested in having their site reviewed here? “We are hoping to get a different angle on the things that we are doing well and the things that can use improvements,” Mr. Karasanti said. “We are not scared of criticism. We are scared that there might be something that we can do to improve, but we just don’t know about it.”

Please take a look at the site and consider a few questions:

  • Does it provide enough information to make you want to buy anything?
  • Does it make it easy to buy?
  • Does it create a sense of trust?
  • What do you think of how the company is using social media?
  • Do you have specific suggestions about the design, navigation or marketing?
  • Why would you buy from this site instead of one of their bigger competitors?

Next week, in our follow-up, we’ll collect highlights from your comments, and I’ll offer some of my own impressions. And we’ll get Mr. Karasanti’s response, as well.

Would you like to have your business’s Web site or mobile app reviewed? This is an opportunity for companies looking for an honest (and free) appraisal of their online presence and marketing efforts.

To be considered, please tell me about your experiences — why you started your site, what works, what doesn’t and why you would like to have the site reviewed — in an e-mail to youretheboss@bluefountainmedia.com.

Gabriel Shaoolian is the founder and chief executive of Blue Fountain Media, a Web design, development and marketing company based in New York.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=927b30a92444dcc336afda251bfe5344

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: , ,

DealBook: Macy’s to Review Martha Stewart Relationship

December 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Macy’s is raining on Martha Stewart‘s parade.

The retailer said Wednesday that its relationship with Martha Stewart is under review. The decision comes after news that rival J.C. Penney is buying a 16.6 percent stake in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Ms. Stewart has several exclusive product lines at Macy’s, including cookware and bed linens, and is a star of their ads.

But with the J.C. Penney deal, she has promised products and marketing heft to a major competitor. In a note to clients, Paul Lejuez, an analyst with Nomura, said the new line, to be introduced in February 2013, should help Penney’s take market share from Macy’s, along with Kohl’s and Target.

In a tart statement, Macy’s suggested that the brand had gotten too ubiquitous.

“In light of the proliferation of Martha Stewart-branded product in the marketplace, Macy’s is reviewing the Martha Stewart products sold at Macy’s for potential changes in the future. No decisions have been made at this time,” the statement said. It added that the Martha Stewart products will be available at Macy’s “until further notice.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=45def2e681cc9c0e6206a7e0303140cb

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

DealBook: J.C. Penney to Buy Stake in Martha Stewart Living

December 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Martha Stewart and Johnny Knoxville in a 2010 broadcast of “The Martha Stewart Show.”David M. Russell/The Martha Stewart ShowMartha Stewart and Johnny Knoxville in a 2010 broadcast of “The Martha Stewart Show.”

First J.C. Penney brought in the man behind Apple’s stores to lead a turnaround. Now, the retailer is looking to a symbol of homemaking to provide a further jolt to lagging sales.

J.C. Penney plans to announce on Wednesday that it will buy a 16.6 percent stake in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia for about $38.5 million, according to people briefed on the matter. The company will also receive two seats on the Martha Stewart board.

J.C. Penney, as part of a 10-year partnership, plans to introduce ministores and a revamped online presence dedicated to the Martha Stewart brand beginning in February 2013, these people said. The in-store areas will be stocked with Martha Stewart products, and will have trained employees who will provide advice and tips not dissimilar to Apple’s Genius Bar concept, these people added.

The deal will bring together two famous brands that are trying to rebuild themselves amid tough times. J.C. Penney brought in Ron Johnson, a former Target executive who became the architect of Apple’s wildly successful push into retailing, as its new chief executive earlier this year as sales declined. And Martha Stewart, a media and brand licensing company, has grappled with losses in eight out of its 10 recent quarters, hurt by an advertising slump.

Martha Stewart expects to reap more than $200 million from the arrangement, including royalty payments, design fees and advertising commitments. The company will continue its existing partnerships with other retailers, like Macy’s and Home Depot. Ms. Stewart will remain her company’s biggest shareholder, controlling most of the voting B shares. J.C. Penney will be the biggest holder of the Class A shares, these people said. She rejoined the company’s board in August after a five-year ban imposed by regulators after her conviction for lying to federal investigators about a stock sale.

J.C. Penney will pay $3.50 a share for its stake, a 12 percent premium to Martha Stewart’s closing price on Tuesday.

Representatives for J.C. Penney and Martha Stewart declined to comment.

In May, Martha Stewart hired the Blackstone Group to review the company’s strategic options after investors had expressed interest in taking a piece of the business. The announcement Wednesday is expected to draw that process to a close.

Talks between Martha Stewart and Penney began several months ago, with Mr. Johnson flying to New York to meet with Ms. Stewart, the people briefed on the matter said. Among the main moments that solidified the partnership was a trip to Martha Stewart’s headquarters, where Mr. Johnson grew excited by an array of merchandise and retail concepts ensconced in the company’s 150,000-square-foot showroom.

The two executives continued to refine the details of the partnership over additional meetings, including at her favorite coffee shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan — where Ms. Stewart discovered that Mr. Johnson doesn’t drink coffee.

For J.C. Penney, a partnership would bring in not only a recognizable brand, but also an opportunity to draw on retail practices that Mr. Johnson first developed at Target and Apple.

And for Martha Stewart, an alliance with J.C. Penney would bring in an eager partner promising prominent space and an additional new source of revenue.

Aligning with Martha Stewart in some ways continues what J.C. Penney has already done with the likes of Sephora, having created ministores for those brands within its stores.

Such exclusive lines were a cornerstone of J.C. Penney’s strategy under Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Myron E. Ullman III, who focused on brands like Call It Spring, MNG by Mangostyle and Modern Bride.

So far, the company’s biggest exclusive bet has been Liz Claiborne, which had been widely sold until August 2010, when J.C. Penney bought exclusive distribution rights for the brand. In October, J.C. Penney sped up a plan to buy the brand outright, spending $267.5 million.

J.C. Penney said in its earnings call last month said that Claiborne had been a “standout performer” in the quarter, and that more than a quarter-million shoppers new to J.C. Penney had bought Claiborne merchandise there.

Still, the reliance on exclusives has not turned around J.C. Penney’s sales. In the third quarter, its sales at stores open at least a year dropped 1.6 percent, while its competitors Macy’s and Kohl’s rose 4 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively.

The deal will tie J.C. Penney closely to Ms. Stewart, who remains the company’s chief saleswoman, with a broad presence across the retail world. She stars in commercials for Macy’s and promotes cookware, furniture and bedding — in patterns like “Holiday Scottie” and “Penguin Choir” — for the retailer. Home Depot produces Martha Stewart-brand paint, cabinets and faucets. And PetSmart features a Martha Stewart Pet line of grooming tools, leashes and clothes.

As recently as September, Staples announced an agreement to sell office supplies designed by Ms. Stewart.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d7be268c345d0f58be32c0d870461611

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

With Some Optimism, Retailers to Increase Holiday Hiring

October 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

While the numbers are not eye-popping — Kohl’s, for example, said Tuesday it would hire 40,000 people, up 5 percent from last year — the upbeat plans come against a backdrop of poor growth in permanent jobs, including in the retail sector.

The main reason for the holiday optimism is that people keep shopping. Forecasts issued so far are predicting seasonal sales increases in the range of 2 percent to 3 percent.

“We expect additional hiring this year given the continued sales growth in our business — both in-store and online,” Terry Lundgren, Macy’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement last week. Macy’s said it would hire around 78,000 temporary workers, a 4 percent increase from last year.

J. C. Penney said it would hire 35,000 people, up from 30,000, while Target, which hired 92,000 holiday workers last year, expects that number to be slightly higher this year. Saks Fifth Avenue says it would hire about the same number as last year, and a Nordstrom spokesman, Colin Johnson, while declining to discuss specifics, said in an e-mail, “If we’re able to continue to build on our momentum we could have more holiday help this year.”

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, declined to discuss its holiday hires, as did Sears.

Stores usually begin adding holiday staff in October, though the main growth is in November and December when shopper traffic really picks up. Macy’s already is listing dozens of holiday jobs on its careers Web site, from cosmetics sales to restocking.

Target has signs in about 170 of its stores encouraging customers to send a text message to get information about holiday employment. Early response has been encouraging, said Eddie Baeb, a Target spokesman.

But for some jobless people, the lure of holiday employment is a distraction. Harold Jacobs, 54, of Tuckahoe, N.Y., who lost his job at a store nine months ago, said he had no intention of applying for a temporary position.

“I don’t want to work for two months and then have to start looking all over again,” Mr. Jacobs said. “I want something permanent.”

Still many are applying, and Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said there will be real, if short-term, benefits.

“If that’s money in their pockets they didn’t otherwise have, that’s going to be headed right back into the economy on bills and necessities, so that’s a positive thing,” she said. “The problem is we have persistent high unemployment, and the fact that these particular jobs we’re talking about are temporary doesn’t make any sort of long-term solution.”

In 2010, about 496,000 temporary workers were hired in the retail sector in November and December, according to the National Retail Federation. That was a 49 percent increase from the prior year, though well below the four years before the recession, when hiring was above 600,000 each year.

Holiday sales in 2010 rose 5.2 percent to $453 billion, according to the trade group, well above the group’s prediction of 3.3 percent. The season is the biggest of the year for almost all retailers.

Some specialty stores are hiring fewer employees than last year. Best Buy, which in 2010 hired 29,000 part-time workers, this year will hire just 15,000. The company said in September that consumers were buying less than it had expected, and cut its profit outlook for the year.

Toys “R” Us is hiring 40,000 employees, which is 5,000 fewer than in 2010. Those notes of caution are worrisome, Ms. Shierholz said.

“I would hope we would be seeing substantial increases, so the fact that we have to ponder whether or not we’re stronger than the extremely weak fourth quarter of 2010 speaks to the weakness of this recovery,” she said.

The number of full-time workers in retail has improved a tiny bit since last year. The National Retail Federation’s economist says retailers have added about 100,000 full-time positions so far this year, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that about 14.57 million people were employed in retailing in August 2011, up about 1 percent from August 2010. But from July to August of this year, there was a 7.8 percent slide in the seasonally adjusted retail employment figures.

Hourly retailing jobs do not tend to be very lucrative. Cashiers have a median wage of $8.89 an hour, and retail sales staff earn a median wage of $9.94, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2010 figures. Those both fall below the $11.72 median hourly wage for all sales jobs, and the $16.27 median wage for jobs over all.

And holiday jobs only rarely turn into full-time work, a prospect that has Mr. Jacobs, the unemployed New York retail worker, feeling glum.

Mr. Jacobs was dismissed from his job managing a Manhattan pharmacy about nine months ago.

“I’ve never had this much trouble finding a job as I have now,” he said. He has applied at Macy’s, Modell’s, CVS, Duane Reade, Kmart and Target, and says he posts his résumé eight to 10 times a day on Craigslist but has had no luck.

“I get my hopes up a lot of times. I apply places, I think things are going well, and then, nothing,” said Mr. Jacobs.

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State of the Art: Visions of a Future Where Phones Replace Wallets

September 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Its new phone software, called Google Wallet, is intended to replace the credit cards in our actual wallets.

It does sound pretty spectacular, doesn’t it? No fishing plastic cards out of wallets, no paper slips, no signatures. Everything is handled securely, instantly, conveniently, with one tap of your phone at the register.

Europeans and Asians already routinely pay for things that way. Why can’t we have that in America?

Now you can. But there are enough footnotes to fill a podiatry journal.

At the moment, the free Google Wallet app runs on only a single cellphone model: Sprint’s Google Nexus S, which runs Google’s Android software. That’s because Google Wallet requires a special N.F.C. chip (near-field communications), and the Nexus S is one of the few phones so equipped.

Someday, Google says, many more phones will have N.F.C. chips. The company says that it’s in talks with every major Android phone maker.

The next question: Where can you use Wallet to pay for things? Google had the inspired idea of teaming up with MasterCard, which has already installed N.F.C. readers at 150,000 merchants in the United States and 230,000 overseas. You can see the black MasterCard PayPass terminals all over the place.

That’s 150,000 companies; the total number of physical stores is far higher. At the moment, they include CVS, Duane Reade, RadioShack, Sunoco, Sports Authority, Foot Locker and New York City taxis. In coming weeks, Google says, more stores will come along, including Subway, Macy’s, Walgreens and Bloomingdale’s.

Someday, Google says, the readers will be installed at cash registers all across this great land.

Think of Wallet as a copy of your actual credit card. Wherever you might swipe a credit card, you can tap your phone instead. At the moment, though, the only credit card Wallet can impersonate is a Citibank MasterCard.

Someday, Google says, all kinds of credit cards from all kinds of banks will work with Wallet.

If you don’t have a Citibank MasterCard, you can still use Wallet. On the screen where you select which credit card you want to use, you’ll find an imaginary one called Google Prepaid Card. It comes with $10 of credit — Google’s gift to you, O Early Adopter — but right there on the phone, you can preload it with more money from another credit card.

All right. So you’re in CVS or 7-Eleven, and the cashier announces the total, “$31.24.” At the exact moment when you would ordinarily swipe your credit card, you simply turn on the phone. (You don’t have to fire up the Wallet app first.) You hold it against the PayPass terminal and enter your four-digit password. The screen says “Sent,” and the terminal’s screen says “Authorizing … Approved … Balance $0. Thank you!”

Security, Google says, is baked into the system from the beginning. The phone’s N.F.C. chip is completely deactivated when the screen is off. That’s to prevent sneaky evildoers from “skimming” (reading) your credit card information.

A shame, really; Google says that the N.F.C. chip could work even when the phone was off, meaning you could keep using it to buy things. But Google chose to emphasize security over convenience; as a result, the phone is useless as a wallet once its battery is dead.

The pass code requirement is intended to prevent people from buying stuff with your phone if it’s lost or stolen, since they won’t know the code. (And if they guess wrong five times in a row, the whole Wallet becomes unusable. You have to contact Google and explain yourself.)

Of course, the four-digit pass code requirement also sucks most of the fun and convenience out of the whole phone-as-wallet concept. Tapping out the pass code on small keys on a not-always-responsive touch screen is a hassle, and not demonstrably faster than signing a regular credit card slip. Why can’t we disable that requirement according to our own paranoia levels?

You can’t even pick an easy-to-type pass code to save yourself effort; Wallet won’t accept codes like 1234 or 1111.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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