Tina Bean’s wish for 2011 is that people will open their wallets more.
“People don’t want to spend money,” said Bean, the owner of Port Arthur, Texas-based pet food dealer, Five Star Feed Store. “They are buying necessities and that’s it.”
Annual sales at Five Star Feed Store have declined approximately $100,000 since the recession, said Bean. She has been forced to lay off three workers and has given pay cuts to the remaining five. The cutbacks have also had a personal effect. “For a long time, I didn’t draw a paycheck,” she said.
Bean’s experience is highlighted by recent financial data from Sageworks Inc., which showed a number of sectors are suffering from declining sales. The report analyzed 2010 sales, profit per employee and payroll as a percentage of sales data for private companies in six major industries: construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, healthcare and education.
All the sectors except health and education experienced a decrease in annual sales. Manufacturing was down 3.6 percent, wholesale trade declined about 4 percent and retail trade dipped a little more than 1 percent in sales for 2010.
Construction showed the most marked decline as sales plummeted by more than 13 percent this year, but that was an anomaly according to Mike Lubansky, a senior financial analyst at Sageworks.
