Overcoat in July?

Weather Helps Fill Discount Racks
Warmth creates glut of winter fashions and bargains for consumers.
Mark Jewell of the Associated Press says:
Paul Murphy went bargain hunting at a discount store called Building 19, and ended up with quite a find A charcoal gray wool men's suit for $66 that he found priced at $329 at a major department store.
"I bought two of them - one for me and one for my son," the 62 year-old piano sales man from Scituate, Mass. said after a visit to a downtown Boston tailor to have the pants altered.
The suit was part of a windfall of closeouts that discounters are snapping up as department stores and wholesalers unload a glut of fall and winter fashions. Unseasonably warm early fall weather and shoppers worried about the economy left stores with unsold merchandise taking up sales floor space heading into the crucial holidays.
Off-price retailers are feasting on overstocks of cool-weather clothing at prices far below what traditional retailers originally paid - deals expected to help discounters boost their profits. And they may pass on some of their benefits to consumers in the form of steeper-than -usual discounts and a fresher apparel selection.
Building 19 initially planned to offer the $66 suits for $79, but went with the lower price out of expectations that traditional retailers' oversupply of cooler-weather clothing would grow, leaving shoppers with a wealth of discount opportunities.
"There are always bargains around but this is unusual," said Jerry Ellis, who co-founded the 14-store New England chain, a self-described "bottom of the barrel" retailer of salvage merchandise, in 1964. "The traditional vendors are almost desperate."
Although retailers have become increasingly sophisticated at adjusting merchandise to fit demand, their predictive powers were no match for the unseasonably warm early fall, coupled with high energy and food prices and a slumping housing market, says Stephen Hoch, head of a retail studies program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
"the whole supply-chain system is clogged up, and it could take four to six months for all this to clear up," Hoch said. "It's kind of like plumbing."
Off-price retailers, he said "are seeing a big influx of better inventory than they might normally have."
"Consumers see apparel as a discretionary purchase, and coming into the holiday season, they know they are going to need their dollars for gifts," said Phil Rist of the market research firm BIGresearch.
There's always inventory give-and-take between retailers and wholesalers. But Hoch said an unusual number of department stores are trying to win concessions from suppliers to help absorb unsold apparel costs, including negotiating to return inventory or secure discounts for future orders.
To move merchandise and free up rack space, some retailers are offering sales and running special promotions earlier than usual before the traditional kickoff to holiday shopping on the day after Thanksgiving.
"What's happening right now is consumers aren't shopping," said Patricia Walker, a partner in the consulting firm Accenture's retail practice.
"Once retailers put deals out there, it's unclear if consumers will look for them at the department stores, at the specialty stores or the discounters. Certainly, the discounters will be offering better products than they have in the past."
So there we have it. If we look carefully we can find the gifts that can make for a very Merry Christmas.