As if we needed another reminder of man’s minor place in the cosmos, here we were, all warm and fuzzy after a rather inspiring CES 2016, when the skies opened up along the hyper-populated Atlantic corridor.
According to Planalytics, a consultancy that actually helps businesses plan around weather, retailers could collectively see a net loss of $850 million from the weekend snow storm, which was also the high range of an estimate from market research firm IHS Global Insight.
While some merchants made up for it in pre-weekend sales of snow blowers and bread, it’s hard to imagine worse timing for the TV business, which only just began blazing a comeback trail this Christmas.
Obliterating a shopping weekend 13 days out from Super Bowl seems downright cruel. As TWICE senior editor Joe Palenchar reported here last week, more consumers were expected to buy a TV during the Super Bowl selling period than during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all of December combined, a FatWallet survey showed.
And, as one New York-area retailer once told me, you never make up sales lost to snow days.
But let’s hope the forecasts for a follow-up Nor’easter are wrong, and all the highways and byways are cleared before Saturday, so dealers and shoppers can redouble their big-screen efforts and salvage TV’s most important sales period of the year.
