'Wrong' weather can foul up retailers' sales

LONE TREE, Colo. -- Wicked winter storms closed the Park Meadows mall here for two painfully long days the week before Christmas last year.

Meanwhile, until cooler weather settled in this week, temperatures in the 60s and 70s this fall had consumers in this fitness-minded Denver suburb hiking and biking, not shopping for winter wear.

Weather can sure put a damper on retail.

Few months pass without at least one retailer blaming Mother Nature for what ails its stores. But while it can seem like a lame excuse, the fact is that weather can play havoc with a retailer's ability to know how much seasonal clothing to offer and when to display it.

Consumers are notorious for avoiding cold-weather clothing until it's, well, actually cold. And it's difficult to get them into the mood to buy warm-weather clothes when they have to scrape ice from the windshield before driving to the mall.

As retailers head into an expected slow holiday season, weather is weighing heavily on their minds again. If consumers aren't motivated to buy cold-weather clothing, retailers are forced to slash prices. When that doesn't work, the stores often wind up sending the goods to off-price outlets, which already are reporting near-record inventories of coats and sweaters.

"I truly believe retailers are impacted by the weather as much as farmers," says Paul Walsh, chief strategy officer of Storm Exchange, a weather-risk-management company.

Even if cold weather returns soon after the warm, as it did in mid-January 2007, some stores move out the winter wear to make room for spring and summer apparel. Then they can get hit again, as they did this past spring. With a very cold Easter and April, "All of those spring items stayed on the shelves," says Walsh, a former meteorologist.