April Retail Sales Trend - from Mastercard data 05/22

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Sustainable Virtual BiZ .com research estimates sales rose about 2% for April, following an 8.7% increase in March. The early Easter boosted sales up to 3 percentage points in March and depressed them in April by the same amount.

Consumers' confidence in the economy rose in April 2010, but the Conference Board business group's index remains below the level that's considered healthy. And unemployment remained high.
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Here are SpendingPulse's figures comparing sales April 4 through May 1 with a year earlier, by product category.
-- Electronics: Sales rose 9.7 percent from a year earlier, helped in part by product launches, including Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet computer on April 3.
-- Online sales soared 15.6 percent. MasterCard reports eCommerce online sales up 18.4% April from last year, its 8th consecutive month of double digit growth, demonstrating that the channel continues to grow at a faster rate than traditional brick and mortar stores.
-- Clothing: Sales fell 3.9 percent from April 2009, and sales that month were 8.2 percent below April 2008. The dip includes a 4.1 percent drop in women's fashions and a 0.5 percent decline in men's.
-- Footwear: Sales in this more resilient category fell 1.7 percent.
-- Luxury: Excluding jewelry, sales rose 15.5 percent from April 2009, when they dropped 18.1 percent from the year before. MasterCard showed luxury sales posted a 22.7% year-over-year increase. It is important to note that this is being measured against March 2009, a month in which we saw significant double digit declines in this sector.
-- Appliances: Enjoying increases since September 2009, this category rose 3 percent for April, possibly reflecting the benefit of the housing tax credit and the federal appliance rebate program.