San Francisco Mall Tour

Went thru the Westfield Downtown Mall with Arnie Cohen and after doing these now for the last few weeks some things definitely becoming clear. The traffic in malls is just not happening other than weekends. This is historically the lull but like we saw in NY at Westchester there is not "normal" traffic happening like past years right now. The spend will be smaller and trend line is flat in general with last year's lower numbers as of right now. That being said there are some above trend and some under. Here's Arnie's take:
Winners
Nordstrom's, American Eagle, JCrew, Chico's, Black/White, Guess, Metro
Tough Season
Aeropostale, Talbots,Ann Taylor, Pir One, Macy's Gymboree, Victoria Secret, Abercrombie
Inventories, store presentation, product mix, recognition of target customer and appeal are all issues we discussed in detail on our walk thru. Lots of details on all of these companies and more we can discuss in more detail. The bottum line is it will be a selective Christmas.