Despite those resurgence rumors, according to a recent Yahoo! Finance story, “second-quarter earnings season for a majority of apparel retailers is shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster.”
At fault, the story says, is the “always-fickle U.S. consumer,” who now spends on “vacations and new cars instead of a fresh pack of underwear or pair of jeans.”
Consequently, “retailers of all kinds are sitting on mountains of excess inventory,” which now “must be worked off at profit-margin-busting prices in order to make way for the lucrative, full-price garb targeted to back to school shoppers in August and September.”
As a result, companies like PVH (-33%), Abercrombie & Fitch (-32%), Nordstrom (-30%), J.C. Penney (-30%), Polo Ralph Lauren (-26%) and American Eagle (-18%), among others, have already watched the bottom fall out of their stock prices, and even stalwarts like Levi’s have had trouble with sales.
And when you add to that continued competition from Amazon, and the expense of “investments to speed up online shipping, bankruptcies and the need to jack up prices due to the U.S.-China trade war hampering supply chains,” there is no fix on the horizon. This is simply “the reality” now.
You can read more about it at Yahoo! Finance.
