Holiday sales
start off strong
throughout U.S.

Isle retailers posted an
8.3% gain on the day
after Thanksgiving

From staff and wire reports

NEW YORK -- Whether it was in cyberspace or at the mall, the nationwide holiday shopping season got off to a promising start over the Thanksgiving weekend.

"So far the holiday season has shaped up for many retailers brilliantly," said Kurt Barnard, president of the consulting firm Barnard's Retail Trend Report. "In many cases, this weekend was well beyond their forecasts."

One snapshot of holiday sales in Hawaii shows isle retailers are participating in the surge. TeleCheck Services Inc., which tracks sales by checks nationwide, said Hawaii sales were up 8.3 percent on Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.

Among the 50 states, Hawaii's performance trailed only New York, which rang up a 9 percent increase for the day after Thanksgiving, compared with the same day last year.

The national average was a 6.4 percent increase for the day, according to Houston-based TeleCheck. While Friday was undoubtedly the busiest day, retailers reported that sales continued at a steady pace through yesterday.

Many isle retailers have expressed optimism that this season will be better that last year, when statewide retail revenues in December fell about 16 percent from December 1997.

That optimism is also shared by the retailers' mainland counterparts, whose expectations for the season have been lifted by high levels of consumer confidence, low unemployment rates and sharp gains on Wall Street.

Still, many merchants are still going to great lengths to lure shoppers and get them buying early in the season, rather than waiting until the days right before and after Christmas, when stores typically slash prices to clear out inventories.

Online stores, in particular, are hoping for most purchases to come in the next two weeks, which would give them ample time to deliver goods as well reorder out-of-stock merchandise.

Yahoo! Inc. said today it had record shopping transaction volume on Friday, posting a more than 400 percent increase compared with the same day a year earlier. In the 10 days before Nov. 26, Yahoo! Shopping processed more orders than it did during the entire 1998 holiday shopping season, according to Santa Clara, Calif.-based. The most commonly term searched for on Yahoo! Shopping was Pokemon, the online company said. Amazon.com Inc., meanwhile, reported orders this weekend were up 150 percent from a year ago.

To drive people to their stores and inspire them to spend, online and traditional retailers are using deep discounts -- some offering as much as 50 percent off -- and aggressive advertising, blanketing television, the Internet and newspapers with promotions.

According to the Nielsen/NetRatings Holiday E-Commerce Index, there was an 18 percent growth in online traffic from Wednesday through the weekend. The winners included those selling toys, with an 80 percent surge in visitors to those sites, and electronics, which saw a 40 percent gain.

Demand was so overwhelming at some Internet stores, such as Toysrus.com and KBKids.com, that their Web sites were inaccessible sporadically throughout the weekend.