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Well it all depends on their numbers in comparison to the past couple years in Jan on a Saturday.
Is it the same or has it significantly decreased. That would be more telling than one or two people noting that it was empty on a random Saturday.
You could try going there every Saturday (or 2 Saturdays a month) for a year and do a comparison.
I don't know if any of you have thought of this, but here goes:
About 15 months ago we had a meltdown of financial markets. Turns out (among other things) banks were making risky loans, batching them up and selling them to investors as AAA rated investments! They weren't. Now there's this giant credit crunch which has virtually gobbled up the entire new construction industry!
Have any of you heard of this?
But in all seriousness... I practically live at the Home Depot near my house. Anyone who goes there often will tell you in a heartbeat that there is but a tiny fraction of the crowd present 2 years ago. Every now and then it'll be slammed like days of yore, but by and large the construction slowdown is fairly reflected by the diminished number of shoppers found at the local HD/Lowes on a weekend morning.
I have not been more than twice in the last 6 months.
Don't have the cash, wife is not working now, and all those "extra" projects were financed from her salary. My absence, and I can only speak for myself, is 100% due to the bad economy. 100%.
We've also cut down our visits to HD/Lowe's.......
Also, there was a Lowe's that was built near me about a yr ago....I used to goto the Lowes in Matthews alot, but they lost my business because this Lowe's is closer now...(my point is sales are skewed sometimes because of new stores bastardizing exisitng ones....)
As an aside, here's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed every weekend, especially Friday, Saturday nights: many restaurants have long wait lists, making it nearly impossible to get a table at a decent time (with kids you can't just eat at 8:30!),
One reason we will rarely eat at a restaurant where we cannot make a reservation...unless the plan is to go hang out for a while in the first place.
To the OP: I'm in metro Atlanta and I made your exact same statement three weeks ago. What I saw was about like the scene you described. Yes it's winter and the "slow season" but the scene was beyond the usual January slump. (By the way, I grew up in retail and worked in it on and off for many years as a second job -- with some of this in home improvement -- so I'm very familiar with what a "normal" January looks like).
What was I doing in Lowe's? Buying materials for a job that couldn't be put off any longer -- plumbing. I was with a handyman when I made this comment.
I love Huckleberry's comment about Home Depot as an economic indicator. How true, how true. It reminded me of a coworker in another recession (early 90s). I had two jobs, one at a newspaper and the other an administrative position at Sears. We all had to drive past Bojangles and Mrs. Winner's on the way to Sears. One man would say, "ok, Common Man's economic indicators say today is worse! Bojangles and Mrs. Winner's are full with the construction guys. Check that out when you leave here for the newspaper give us a report on the afternoon numbers tomorrow!" Some of our younger workers thought the man was joking, but I viewed it as wonderful common sense.
I agree with everyone up there with regards to Lowes or other home improvement stores ^^^^.
As an aside, here's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed every weekend, especially Friday, Saturday nights: many restaurants have long wait lists, making it nearly impossible to get a table at a decent time (with kids you can't just eat at 8:30!), and parking lots where there are movie theaters, such as Stonecrest, are completely full to the gills, to the point where last weekend when my husband and I went to see Avatar we had to park somewhere near the Borders and walk to the theater.
Makes me wonder what's really going on.
Not trying to debate that there are issues with the economy, just wondering how bad and widespread they are.
Movies tend to do pretty well in bad economic times. It's cheaper than going out of town or shopping at the mall. And it's escapism. (http://http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/24/economy.movies/index.html - broken link)
Stonecrest might not be the best example as its where the wealthy 10% goes. It also has the only IMAX in town that regularly show movies.
Plus it's difficult to tell if those folks on the TGIF waiting list were eating at Morton's in 2007
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