A new report shows the major winter storm that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of Michiganders last month also hurt late Christmas sales.
About a half million Michiganders spent part of Christmas week in the dark after an ice storm cut a swath through the state.
Tom Scott is with the Michigan Retailers Association. He says the Dec. 22 storm robbed many stores of last-minute Christmas shoppers.
“To have power outages all over the state, we had stores closed, people without any electricity in their homes, we had snow and cold weather everywhere – that was pretty dismal,” says Scott.
Scott says Michigan retailers report only a .1% increase in Christmas sales this year, well below the 1.3% forecast.
The latest Michigan Retail Index showed 38% of retailers increased sales during the holiday season and 41% experienced declines. 21% reported flat sales.
