While national analysts and trade groups say many big retail chains are facing a tough holiday-sales environment this year, some local retailers here are forecasting a jollierin some cases, a much jollierseason.


One wouldnt think that from a retailers perspective thered be much to carol about this holiday season, with the economy still faltering, the stock market tumbling, and the threat of war overlaying it all.


Yet, retailers in some sectors can expect a good holiday season because of those issues, analysts say.


Customers have turned even more inward since last September, according to BIGresearch LLC, a retail research and consulting company based in Worthington, Ohio. Products for the home, such as consumer electronics and furnishings, and personal items such as jewelry and books, are expected to be big sellers this year, the company predicts.


Doug Toone, owner of Jewelry Design Center here, says that his customers are staying home more these days, due to nervousness about air travel. That works to his benefit, Toone says, because our biggest competition (for jewelry sales) a lot of times is travel. Besides that, jewelry is an emotional purchase, and people are heeding their emotions more these days, he believes.


Toone says hed be real happy with a 20 percent year-over-year sales increase for the holiday season, but realistically is looking for a 10 percent to 15 percent increase.


Murray Huppin, president of Huppins Hi-Fi, Photo & Video Inc., likewise says he believes holiday sales will be real strong this year.


The types of products we sell are still the products that have tremendous value for customers; they provide a lot of entertainment, he says.


Price declines in the most popular electronics categories, such as digital cameras, should contribute to a high-single-digit sales increase this holiday season compared with the year-earlier period, Huppin says.


Were actually very satisfied with that considering what were reading about competitors around the country, he says.


Joel Ferris, of the Joel Inc. furniture and gifts store here, is forecasting a somewhat lower sales increaseabout 3 percentfor the fourth quarter compared with last year. He says sales of gift items at the high-end store have been a little bit anemic this year, probably because such items frequently are considered a discretionary expense and people have cut back on that kind of spending as their investment portfolios have shrunk.


Conversely, sales of furniture at Joel have been strong this year, he says. He believes thats because people are buying homes to take advantage of low mortgage-interest rates, and people always need furniture when theyre buying houses.


Ferris sales forecast for Joel roughly jibes with national predictions for holiday sales increases, which range from 3 percent to more than 4 percent.


Those are decent increases, especially when you consider were in a recession, says Randy Barcus, Avista Corp.s economist here.


Such growth rates, however, pale in comparison with retail-sales increases of just a few years ago. In 1999, holiday sales were 8.6 percent higher than in the previous year, according to Retail Forward Inc., a retail consulting company based in Columbus, Ohio.


The outlook for retailers and for the economy at large continues to be the result of a tug-of-war between the positive and negative forces pulling at the economy, the organization says in its 2002 holiday-spending forecast.


Barcus agrees, saying that a home-mortgage refinancing boom has put more money in consumers pockets just as retailers have engaged in intensely competitive price cutting to attract customers.


Because of that price cutting, many of the retail worries being expressed this year at the national level center more on the overall profitability of big retail chains, such as Kmart Corp., than on holiday sales increases, he says.


Here in the Inland Northwest, consumers benefit from retail difficulties elsewhere because so many big national chains have opened stores in this area, Barcus says.


We get the benefit when they have a sale because business is slow in other parts of the country, he says. We get the sales prices here too.


Its important to remember, also, that despite layoffs here, We still have an awful lot of people working in the greater metropolitan area, Barcus says. Its unfortunate that there are several thousand more people unemployed, but there are 240,000 (people) employed.


Sue Shaw, co-owner of Mels Nursery Floral & Gifts, on Spokanes North Side, says sales at the store have been strong this year, and shes ordered the same amount of holiday merchandise as she did last year. Still, she confesses to some nervousness: Im thinking real positive, but you just dont know, she says.


Toone, at Jewelry Design Center, says hes observed one more trend here that fuels his optimism for the holiday season: We find that in Spokane, we never see the really good times, but we never see the really bad times when things are happening. Were kind of isolated. So, Im optimistic.