By Hadassa Kalatizadeh
NYC seems to have entwined holiday spirit with shopping sprees, and it’s been good for business.
New York City consumers are set to break records purchasing gifts, goods and holiday entertainment, according to the NY Post. Forecasts and local merchants say this Christmas shopping season is the best we have seen in a long time.
“New Yorkers are a bit more excited about the holiday season this year,” said Don Levy, director at the Siena College Research Institute (SCRI). “Holiday gift budgets have risen slightly and New Yorkers’ collective view of their personal finances is up compared to a year ago.”
The volume of deliveries and pickups, which is regularly used as a benchmark, has picked up dramatically. DHL Express US told the NY Post that it expects its delivery of packages in New York City from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day to increase by 11 percent year-over-year, and pickups to jump by 19 percent. DHL says that overall its forecasts the NYC volume to spike by 13 percent this holiday season over last year.
“E-commerce is contributing significantly to our growth momentum, especially around the holidays,” said Ryan Hunter, VP, global customers, for DHL Express Americas.
WalletHub, the personal finance Web site, predicts that the average NYC resident will have spent $753 this year from November through Dec. 25. That compares well with Silicon Valley’s Palo Alto, home of startups and millennial millionaires, where America’s heaviest holiday spenders spent an average of $3,160 for the same time period.
The retail holiday boom in NYC echoes a broader national trend. The National Retail Federation predicts US holiday retail sales in November and December will hit a new record, and leap by 3.8 percent to 4.2 percent over last year.
Nationally, online sales peaked this year, accounting for 14.6 percent of all holiday retail, and growing 18.8 percent over last year, as per Mastercard’s Spending Pulse report. “E-commerce sales hit a record high this year with more people doing their holiday shopping online,” said Steve Sadove, a Mastercard senior adviser and former Saks CEO. “Due to a later than usual Thanksgiving holiday, we saw retailers offering omnichannel sales earlier in the season, meeting consumers’ demand for the best deals across all channels and devices.”
As per the Post, last-minute Christmas shoppers, empowered by rising wages, spent $34.4 billion on the last Saturday before Christmas on gifts, breaking records to make it the biggest shopping day in history. The total amount spent online and in stores on that Saturday was more than 8 percent above last year, and also topped Black Friday spending by 10 percent, according to Customer Growth Partners, a retail research and consulting firm. Popular items sold included Disney’s “Frozen II” toys, the Nintendo Switch, and Apple’s Air Pod Pro, the iPhone 11 and Series 5 watch.
