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This time next week - Labour Weekend - a common refrain will be heard in shopping malls across New Zealand. "Christmas decorations already? It gets earlier every year!"
It's Labour Weekend when the big mall owners start putting up their decorations in preparation for the time of the year that can make or break many.
On one side of the scales this Christmas will be slumping property prices, finance company failures and rising mortgage rates. On the other is record low unemployment, a booming dairy sector and good economic confidence statistics.
And when premium Wellington department store Kirkcaldie & Stain's recently opened its Christmas shop, it described it as "the most successful launch in seven years".
About 500 people turned up to the opening evening on October 4, a fundraiser for Plunket.
Wellingtonians are good at supporting such events, says Kirkcaldie's managing director, John Milford, but he is not necessarily seeing this as a sign of great things to come for Christmas sales.
He is being extremely cautious about what to expect because there are so many economic factors affecting the present retail market.
"There are a number of competing factors. Normally it is like a pendulum, it swings one way or the other," says Milford, but the current situation is different. "On the one hand you've got very low unemployment but then there are other factors like [rising] interest rates."
The All Blacks' loss is another small factor. "It was slow last week," says Milford, because people have lost the feel-good factor.
He is looking for better Christmas figures than last year, although they were happy with sales during the last festive season.
The retail industry meanwhile has its forecasts for this year.
"We think it's going to be a good Christmas," says a spokesman at the NZ Retailers Association. "We said at the beginning of the year sales would grow by 5 per cent in actual terms on last year."
"I think it will be a solid Christmas but it won't be a bumper one," says ANZ's chief economist Cameron Bagrie, who insists the housing slowdown and dropping real estate values will have an effect on people buying big ticket items such as cars and white goods.
"People won't have that feeling of wealth this Christmas. The housing market and the durable goods market run in sync."
Over the next three to four months, says Bagrie, people will become aware of rising prices of staples such as bread and dairy products.
The strong uptake on KiwiSaver will also have an effect on shoppers' spending as people feel that 4 per cent leaving their pay packets.
"If there are going to be increased savings, it implies less consumption, there's no such thing as a free lunch," says Bagrie.
Although shopping centre owners are paying attention to experts such as Bagrie, they are more optimistic than the economic pundits.
AMP Capital Shopping Centres is upbeat because of the arrival of several new stores in recent months at its most reliable NZ shopping centre, LynnMall in West Auckland.
The arrival in September of huge Australian discount electrical retailer JB Hi-Fi, has already led to increased foot traffic. The electrical retailer sells anything from CDs and DVDs to laptops and plasma televisions.
"We are anticipating quite strong growth given the new offers we have put in the mall, we are quite confident it will be substantial," says Linh Luong, senior marketing manager of AMP Capital Shopping Centres.
"Interest rates haven't slowed down people's spending habits. Our sales have been consistently up. We are all gearing up towards Christmas."
In a retail sector where there are winners and losers, electrical retailers with the right attitude are doing nicely.
JB Hi-Fi is an aggressively priced one-stop shop. It piles on the staff in busy periods, has a wide variety of stock, and salespeople are trained to be flexible on the floor. Regional manager Keegan Smith-Frowd says the ASX-listed retailer, which bought Hill & Stewart in March, is hoping to open eight to 10 stores in New Zealand in the next two to three years. Its fourth store is opening at Westfield Albany on November 1.
He is expecting a lot of new home theatre sales at the North Shore store.
"We will revolutionise retailing in New Zealand. Since JB Hi-Fi came in [consumers] will be so much better off," says Smith-Frowd.
The prices of plasma TVs have already gone down since the company entered the market. He believes JB Hi-Fi will always drive traffic into the shopping centres with its prices.
Jeremy Kirk-Smith, general manager of New Zealand's largest toy distributor Planet Fun, is well aware of the fascination by the general public of the latest electronic gizmo. He says the toy business is changing to keep up with children's fascination with mobile phones and MP3 players.
Even soft toys now have link-ups with websites - or "characterisation online" as it's known in the industry.
Gearing up for a busy November, the wholesaler says the NZ toy sector may in time follow Australia, where the industry works together to instead promote toys in July, giving away massive discounts.
Australian retailers now sell more toys in July than in December, says Kirk-Smith, which makes them "more relaxed" about sales over summer.
Here in New Zealand, companies such as Farmers and The Warehouse are now putting out July toy catalogues but 70 per cent of sales still happen in the last quarter of the year. Increasingly people are not buying until the last two weeks of Christmas.
Any repercussions of an economic slowdown are not affecting his business as yet.
"Kids seem to be the last ones to suffer unless things are really, really bad," says Kirk-Smith.
"I think you find what happens when people get depressed is they go and buy things or eat more," says Kiwi Income Property Trust chief executive, Angus McNaughton, another upbeat shopping centre owner preparing for Christmas. "We benefit from both of those." He says there have been "very strong" August sales from its Sylvia Park shopping centre in Auckland.
"Sylvia Park is getting people from Waikato and people are spending a long time there, it's a real destination."
Features, such as a restaurant lane of seven restaurants and an "adventure precinct" with a number of well-known outdoor retailers, are helping keep people in the centre for longer.
"This Christmas we will be focusing on customers," says McNaughton. "We will be doing things to help the customer, like help them carry their bags to the car. There will be guest services people employed."
Shopping mall giant Westfield, with the official opening of its Albany shopping centre on November 1, is preparing for a big Christmas push from Labour Weekend onwards.
It has attracted K-Mart's first store on Auckland's North Shore, Farmers will have its largest format store there and there will also be a new look New World supermarket.
Chief executive of appliance and electronic retailer for Noel Leeming, Andrew Dutkiewicz, says new iPod products, such as the new iPod Touch, are expected to be big sellers.
Dutkiewicz is bullish about the next few months, saying a buoyant labour market, an increase in average weekly incomes and the high NZ dollar will all help to keep sales high.
Rod Duke, managing director of the Briscoe Group, which recently opened a Living & Giving store at Westfield Albany, predicts the Albany centre will turn into one of the three main "regional super centres", joining Botany Downs Town Centre and Westfield Manukau.
Duke, a veteran of New Zealand retail, says there are "two or three things" that will send it down: "spiralling petrol prices, people put their hands in their pockets [every week]; housing interest rates, [mortgage payments] happen every month. The other one is the weather".
David Boyce, head of research at ASB Securities, warns there might come a time when Auckland is overshopped, but the investment analyst is not concerned about the short-term fortunes of the retail sector.
He believes one of the most important things sustaining the consumer spending is the labour market.
Russell Sinclair, northern regional manager of the NZ Retailers Association, says economic factors "are not a major, the public mood changes with announcements of anything that hits them in the pocket".
Things are "reasonably stable" over the All Blacks' loss, since it is the women who do the shopping and "they move on more quickly".
FESTIVE SHOPPING
* Christmas decorations will start to go up in the big shopping malls next weekend - signalling the start of the busiest time of the year for retailers.
* Opinions are mixed as to whether the slumping property market will adversely affect the retail sector. Record low unemployment, however, may mean another bumper year.
* Toy retailers are trying to get more people to buy their products in June and July.
* Increased KiwiSaver savings coming out of wages may mean shoppers have less money to spend in the stores.
* New electronic gadgets, such as the iPod touch and a cheaper PlayStation3, are expected to be popular this summer, as are cheaper iPod accessories, such as speakers and car kits.
* The New Zealand dollar has remained high for most of this year, which should mean shoppers getting some good deals on imported goods.
* Retailers, such as Noel Leeming and newcomer JB Hi-Fi, are predicting a good Christmas season for this year.
