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Kath Cooper says, when she dropped some of her Simply Kawakawa balms to a shop she rents a shelf in recently, she was told sales had increased over the last couple of months.
That might be positive news, but turnover is still down on a year earlier, and Cooper says shoppers' habits have changed.
"They might buy what they went in for but they aren't adding one more thing, or something for themselves."
She is hoping next year will be better.
"There are still people talking around me saying 'yeah get that from Temu' so I think it might be hard for [some places]."
Simply Kawakawa put up its prices this year for the first time in two years, due to underlying costs. Some went up by $1 and others by $2 or $3.
"I was nervous it might slow down sales but it feels like it hasn't impacted too much so far."
As Christmas draws nearer, the picture for retail is mixed.
BNZ economist Mike Jones said the 10 percent contraction in sales volumes experienced over the past two-and-a-half years was the largest in data that went back to the 1990s.
Card spending data showed a drop in November, after two months of increases, which ASB economists said was disappointing and reflective of weak demand.
"Despite cooling inflation, further falls in interest rates and income tax cuts, households are still hunkering down and exercising constraint amid rising job insecurity and slow wage growth."
They said there should be a retail recovery in 2025.
Dane Ambler, executive director at Buy NZ Made, said it had probably been the hardest year since the pandemic for many small businesses.
"Our advice is to get behind small local artisan businesses and show them support this Christmas."
He said many people had moved on from big spending on mass produced items and might prefer to check out markets or opt for small, handmade gifts.
Gift cards for local businesses could also be welcome, he said.
"It's really important we do support small businesses over the Christmas period, it's a key trading period for them, the time when they get most of their income. Often it sees them through the first few months of the year. If it's quite they may struggle next year."
Consumer spending processed through all core retail merchants, excluding hospitality, in Worldline NZ's payments network during the first full week of December reached $818 million, which was up almost 4 percent year-on-year.
Carolyn Young, chief executive of Retail NZ said she was cautiously optimistic that it could be a better Christmas this year than last.
"Black Friday numbers were in line with last year, that it is a win in itself."
She said people were shopping for lower price points. One large retailer told her foot traffic was up but the average dollar value of sale was down.
Kiwibank spending data reflected that. It showed spending was up 4 percent in November by volume but the value of spending dropped 2.5 percent.
Mary Jo Vergara, Kiwibank senior economist, said people were spending less but getting more, which was a notable change from recent years when people were spending more to get less because of the impact of inflation.
Now, with inflation back in the target band and some discounting for Black Friday, people were able to to get more for their money, she said.
She said it seemed shoppers were cautious but ready to spend.
She said there was growing interest in spending on experiences rather than material goods. Spending on dining, entertainment and travel had surged.
"Other factors helping consumers feel better are that we're entering a period of real income growth, the cost of living crisis is over and now pay rises are running above inflation."
Young said a reasonable December would be critical for businesses.
She said people should shop locally if they could.
"It will help kickstart the economy if you buy locally and shop at stores in NZ whether that's online or in bricks and mortar."
She said people also had more consumer protections when they bought from local shops.
"If you purchase something you can get it put right, as a consumer you've got some recourse under the Consumer GuaranteeS act."
In contrast it could be harder to get a refund on things bought from overseas.
"Whereas in New Zealand it's really clear about how that works and both businesses and consumers are aware of that… on the very rare occasion when things don't work out there is a recourse you can go down that's well supported."
She said 85 percent of purchases were made in-store but 80 percent or 90 percent of people would research online first, and there was a risk that they could be targeted with foreign advertising during that process.
NZ Post said it delivered close to 2.6 million items last week.
"To put this into perspective, leading into our peak period we were delivering circa 1.6 million items a week. We also saw some of our previous records broken last week, with 580,000 items hitting our network on December 2,, which is an 8.6 percent increase on our previous record of 530,000 items in 2021."
