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January 7, 2025

Working Harder To Stay Happy in the New Year

Note from the Editor-in-Chief: The following column was written and published before the wildfires broke out in the Los Angeles area. As the column projects a message of new year optimism, the HomePage News team understands the many people, businesses and communities devastated by the wildfires, as well as other tragic events across the country and the world, may not share in such sentiment at this time. People, business and community can be strongly resilient, however, and HomePage News expresses its sympathy to those affected by the wildfires while wishing for their safety and recovery. 

There’s just something warm and fuzzy about all those “Happy New Year” salutations still flying around as the winter’s first arctic blast chills a good portion of the country.

And by the way… just how long into the new year is it appropriate to greet people with “Happy New Year?” More on that later.

“Happy New Year.” To many, it evokes the promise of a fresh beginning as if as the secondhand passes each year at 12:00 a.m. from December 31 to January 1, challenge and hardship prior to that midnight moment become less daunting.

Forgive us if our souls and minds, especially in a period of persistent volatility everywhere we look, crave the soothing balm of hope in the thought that everyone and everything gets to start anew on January 1. Even if they really don’t, a fact into which many typically are rudely awakened the first morning back to work after January 1 to find everything exactly as it was, only a couple weeks later, before the previous signoff.

“Happy New Year.” There it is again. And it’s already a week into January.

OK, with the home and housewares business as a backdrop, let’s run with the optimism so embedded in the yearly salutation.

It’s true there is something refreshing in the early-year air each January as the industry turns swiftly and promptly from tallying the holiday receipts to the aisles of what will be a vital, rapid-fire string of industry trade shows. Starting this week, the industry sprints through Dallas, Atlanta, Paris, Las Vegas, New York, Birmingham, Frankfurt and Chicago, all before spring arrives, to provide an immediate assessment of those holiday receipts while setting the stage for the launch of new products and marketing developments that will be so instrumental to the assessment of the next year-end sales tallies. No rest for the weary in the new year.

And it’s true all this new year activity comes on the heels of a holiday season that, by early accounts, lived up to relatively positive forecasts. Mastercard’s SpendingPulse reported a preliminary 3.8% year-over-year increase in U.S. retail sales, excluding automotive, from November 1 through December 24. Meanwhile, Salesforce reported that the $1.2 trillion spent online during the holiday season globally and $282 billion spent in the U.S. during the period represented year-over-year sales increases of 3% worldwide and 4% in the United States.

All this happened amid consumers’ relentless pursuit of discount pricing. And with cost- and health-fixated consumers saying they plan to cut back spending on non-essential goods and out-of-home dining in 2025, it’s true housewares, which has a history of sneaking into essential territory during penny-wise times, is still well positioned for a return to widespread, lasting growth in 2025.

“Happy New Year.” Yes, still.

Retailing was turbulent in 2024. It seems stuck on a perpetually bumpy, expensive incline of technology adoption and customer acquisition challenges that constantly must confront unpredictable obstacles to operation and supply before advancing to the basic competitive objective of convincing people to shop and buy.

But even in such volatility, 2024 turned to 2025 with some signs of new life in retailing. While the last week before the ball dropped began with news of a Chapter 11 reorganization of The Container Store, the seemingly always faint department store sector got a shot of adrenaline with the news of the pending family buyout of Nordstrom and Saks’ plan to buy Neiman Marcus. Then, the Big Lots banner was pulled from a liquidation fire by an agreement for Variety Wholesalers to take over hundreds of Big Lots stores.

In what can be a harsh reality, “Happy New Year” is not a promise. It is often expressed with an exclamation point when perhaps a question mark would be more appropriate.

To that end, “Happy New Year,” as we may forget, is actually a wish. It is a goal — in work and in life — worthy of the extra thought, effort and execution it takes to achieve its very simple sentiment.

Perhaps there is no need for an expiration date on how long to greet someone with “Happy New Year” as long as actions in support of the salutation can outlast the words.

For now… Happy New Year. It’s a good start.

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