What Financial Crisis? Americans Go Shopping

I went to the mall over the weekend to see if I could gauge any fallout from the near-doom the country’s economy nearly suffered last week before the “rescue plan” was passed.

I went to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, a western suburb of Chicago. It’s one of the largest indoor malls in the country, and the largest in the Chicago area (although the Mall of America in Minneapolis dwarfs it.)

It was a lovely 65 degree and sunny day in Chicago. Given the time of year, I expected people to be out at pumpkin farms or apple orchards enjoying the nice weather before winter arrives (too soon, unfortunately.)

But I was wrong.

When I pulled into the parking lot, it was crowded. Not holiday shopping crowded, but not doom and gloom either.

It was just as crowded inside the mall.

I was suprised by this. What financial crisis?

No one in that mall had a clue that the banks were failing.

Discount Stores Still Rule

There was a distinct difference in the crowds in the individual stores, however.

The discount specialty retailers were packed. Literally- lines out the door. Those included Forever 21 and H&M. Teenagers were mobbing both stores.

Moderately expensive stores like The Gap had some foot traffic but no lines at the registers. It’s sister store Banana Republic was a madhouse but only because it was still advertising a 30% off sale (and, in some cases, 40% to 50% off certain merchandise.) There were lines at the registers at Banana.

The upper end was dead as a doornail. That includes such women retailers like Ann Taylor, Talbots, Anthropologie and JCrew.

JCrew was interesting to me. I normally peruse the downtown Chicago store on Michigan Avenue which is always quite crowded and where the merchandise seems to get picked over quickly.

The JCrew in Woodfield was so dead you could have rolled a dozen bowling balls from the front of the store to the back and not hit anyone. Same with Talbots, even though sweaters were 20% off there. It was so quiet it was almost like being in a library.

Could the difference in the JCrew stores have to do with foreign tourists? I wonder. Because the difference between the suburban and downtown store was illuminating.

Department Store Have and Have Nots

The same disparity was obvious at the department stores in the mall. Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor, both upscale brands, were dead. Neither had serious sales, so who wants to pay full price right now?

Conversely, Sears was surprisingly busy. I don’t know if the foot traffic was translating into sales though. It looked like people were browsing.

Were People Carrying Bags or Just Looking?

From the number of bags being carried, there looked to be quite a few people buying- especially at stores with sales. And the teenagers looked to be a force to be reckoned with.

But maybe the absence of shoppers at the upscale stores, the very stores that would appeal to “grown-ups”, so to speak, tells you all you need to know about what is going on in the economy.

Or maybe not.

One thing was clear. “Going to the mall” on a Saturday afternoon was still the American past time this last weekend here in Chicago. People seemed to be enjoying themselves as they bought fast food goodies, sampled the new iPod at the Apple store and otherwise checked out merchandise.

Did you think Americans would lose their consumeristic tendencies that quickly?

Financial crisis be damned.

We still want that Coach purse (which, by the way, was bucking the trend of the expensive store being dead as it appeared to have a lot of foot traffic. Go figure.)

Perhaps consumer behavior will change in the coming days and weeks. I will again be checking out the malls in the near future.

With 2/3rds of GDP coming from consumer spending, it’s the one way to really guage what is going on in the economy.

The Mall was crowded.

For now, that says it all.