Sure, Neiman Marcus recently had some very bad news, that its fiscal first-quarter profits were down 34 percent. But Mint.com, a site that helps people track their finances, says its numbers show that the luxury retail market is on the rebound. See here:
By aggregating date from 1 million of their users, Mint claims to have a “representative sampling of U.S. consumers.” The chart shows that, for these luxury retailers, spending per user is coming back up to 2008 levels late in the year. But since the bottom didn’t really fall out of the market until late 2008, isn’t it easier for the retailers to look better compared to last year when it comes to these October and November numbers, as opposed to the first quarter of 2008?
Plus shouldn’t we discount all the data on this chart, since they’re classifying Banana Republic as a “luxury retailer?”
