The slow sales season has retailers more worried than usual this year

Little Blue Macaron in Raleigh, North Carolina, sells its namesake colorful cookies in flavors like browned-butter vanilla, lavender and honey, and almond and berry jam. But lately, the business has been selling a lot fewer of them.

“We’re seeing regular customers, we know their purchasing patterns, and we see that they’re scaling back,” said owner Allison Vick.

Instead of buying a dozen cookies, people will buy two. Instead of ordering a latte, they’ll get drip coffee. And this isn’t just a winter drop-off. The pattern started before the holidays. So Vick’s trying to cut costs. She renegotiated prices with her packaging supplier and cut down some employees' hours, which means she’s working more.

“My husband and myself, we can be in this business helping open early or stay open later if we need to without it impacting our bottom line as much,” she said.

The first months of the year are always tough for retailers, after the spike in shopping during the holidays. But businesses are especially anxious this year.

“[Consumers are] feeling full, they’re feeling poor, they’ve really just been depleted,” said Sonia Lapinsky at Alix Partners.

The cold and snow that’s hit a lot of the country has made it hard for people to think about, say, buying new shorts for spring. Tariffs and inflation are still top of mind. Plus, there’s a lot going on in the world these days.

“It’s hard to get excited about, you know, a new phone launching or a new makeup launch because there’s just so much distraction with global events, global politics,” said Manini Vivek Horowitz, a marketing professor at New York University.

So instead of pushing new products during the slow season, retailers are stepping back a bit to look at the bigger picture. 

“Retailers are using this time to test and learn,” taking stock of inventory, reevaluating pricing and strengthening ties with customers, said Horowitz.

Vick recently partnered with another local business to host a terrarium-making class in her cafe.

“And that benefits both of us because they have a place to operate their small business and do these pop-up events and we have maybe new customers who’ve never been in the shop before,” she said. “And hopefully they’ll turn into a repeat customer.”

Because the more people pull back on spending, the more customers she needs to make up for the losses.