Election day, a statutory holiday in Israel, has resulted in Israelis flooding the country's malls in droves, helped by the rainy weather. The ingathering of voters is alleviating the sharp slump in stores' sales caused by the economic slowdown.
Department store chain New Hamashbir Lazarchan Ltd. (TASE:MSZB) closed the doors for a while at its Nahariya branch, for the first time in history, because of the mass of shoppers and inability to serve them all. By mid-afternoon, the company's sales proceeds were double the daily average.
Israel Malls CEO Moshe Rosenblum told "Globes" that the Lee Cooper fashion retail chain reported 4.5 times its average daily revenue by midday. He said that 15,000 shoppers had visited the company's malls. "The malls are packed. We couldn’t have wished for better weather from our perspective," he said.
Azrieli Malls CEO Peer Nadir said traffic at the company's malls was double the daily average, and predicted 150,000-200,000 visitors by the end of the day. The malls' parking lots were filled to capacity by 11 am.
The hot, dry weather of the past two months, coupled with the economic slowdown, has badly hurt winter collection sales of fashion chains. The chains and the malls saw election day as a chance to greatly boost sales, and many stores are offering special discounts. It remains to be seen whether the flood of visitors will translate into higher sales.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 10, 2009
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