Credit Herald

A few weeks into the holiday shopping season, American consumers are still not reaching for their wallets.

After a fairly robust October, retail sales have slowed in November as the nation’s stores enter their critical time of year. Major sectors like apparel, luxury goods and jewelry have experienced slight sales declines.

That might seem like an ominous sign about how the chains will fare this Christmas. But retailing analysts said the declines were minor and that many consumers were saving their powder for the day after Thanksgiving.

Retailing veterans expect stores to be bustling on Friday as frugal consumers hunt for bargains with newfound purpose. Retailing professionals are also cheered that stores have less inventory today than they did this time last year.

For Nov. 1 to 14, sales of women’s clothing declined 3.3 percent and sales of men’s clothing fell 1 percent compared with last year, according to SpendingPulse, which estimates sales from all forms of payment. Luxury goods posted the biggest year-over-year decline, falling 9.2 percent.

Those declines were not as bad, though, as the double-digit losses that stores experienced last year and into early 2009.

Last year, sales over Thanksgiving weekend declined 1.01 percent from a year earlier, according to SpendingPulse. That was a departure from previous years, when sales rose briskly — up 4.5 percent in 2007, up 6.1 percent in 2006 and up 5.7 percent in 2005.

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