These two companies gave a must-have lesson for all retailers, Sharper Image combed the globe for unusual and exciting products that weren't run-off-the-mill ... Retailers made the mistake of taking customers for granted and the payoff came two weeks ago in much weaker Christmas sales because of ho-hum kind of merchandise.

One word - dismal. There's nothing else to be said but absolutely dismal.

They feel they no longer need to go broke when they go shopping,

July was a washout, a bust, whichever way you want to call it, unless you were a discount retailer,

This is actually a little worse than I expected, and particularly bad when viewed within the context of a year ago, which was already very weak.

There are two conflicting forces at work on the consumer. One is people have jobs, they have money, the unemployment rate is still at a 30-year low of 3.9 percent, a lot of economic circumstances are very, very favorable. A lot of economic circumstances are very, very favorable, people have money and jobs, but they don't have as high a discretionary spending level as they did a year ago.