Burt Flickinger Quotes (18 Quotes)

About 95 percent of the time, weather is an unrealistic excuse, ... Less than 5 percent of the time, there's either a very low or no relationship at all between weather and a dramatic decline in sales and profits.

New York will take the entire country down about 1 percent to 1 percent.

Retail planning has a very long lead time and it's tightly controlled,

The good news is that a lot of shoppers are postponing purchases and going out the last week of the year. So there will be a real sales surge next week, which will help retailers.

It will still set an all-time U.S. record. But that said, the retailers expecting a 6 percent to 7 percent increase in sales will be happy to get half of that.

For busy parents who stock up on baby food and other items, if they can't easily find it in Wal-Mart, they don't have time to go back. They'll just go to the competition. It's critical for Wal-Mart stores to be fully stocked and have experienced staff on weekends.

Starting with the recession in the mid-70's, the worse the economy got the better Wal-Mart sales would be. Now, like everybody else, Wal-Mart is using every excuse in the book to disguise company-specific problems.

The company is in so much of a free fall. It looks like it's going to get worse before it gets better.

It's a sad day, with more than 100 people out of work during the holidays.

Now, rather than former outsiders having a big voice in the company, it will become more of a meritocracy.

The biggest implication of Wal-Mart bringing payment processing in-house is the potential for it to save an unprecedented amount of money in yearly fees.

No matter what the stores do, they still seem to not be able to stimulate spending.

Consumers increasingly have a conscience and are increasingly shifting to competitors.

Consumers are wearing this year what they wore last year. We're already seeing a slowdown in apparel and accessories and that's a pretty bad barometer going into the winter season.

It presents a challenge to Wal-Mart, especially in key battleground states like California,

For the first time in nearly five years, there is a real softness in the upper-tier department store sector.

It is critical for Wal-Mart to start doing a billion dollars a day in sales starting on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which is the big 30-day push for Christmas and year-end sales.

Americans are work-stressed, time-stressed, and they're eating out more. Sugar and fat is tasty and it gives immediate gratification.