Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has become the official/unofficial start for the holiday gift shopping season. It’s just a shopping day like any other shopping day and its success or failure will rise or fall on the shoppers’ moods and willingness to spend. Fourth quarter is declining in importance at retailWhich brings me to another popular retail myth: that a retailer’s success or failure for the year depends on the success or failure in the fourth quarter. Over the last 24 years, retail sales have been flattening out across the quarters, with the declines in the fourth quarter being pretty well evenly distributed to quarters one, two and three. While a skew toward more sales in the fourth quarter remains, it is no longer the make-or-break quarter as popularly believed.

Source: Forbes October 29, 2017 09:56 UTC