Back to School Spedning Pegged At Nearly $20 Billion

The trade group, the National Retail Federation, came out with its annual preview of the upcoming back to school shopping season, which more or less, has already started. They expect spending to increase by nearly 7% from last year to $18.4 billion on student-related spending. No surprise, the number one category for back to school purchases is clothing and accessories. Electronics-related purchases are expected to see the biggest year over year increases. Although our own Back to School Retail and Shopping Report doesn't come for another couple of weeks, we have a few solid inclinations on what the "must have" items will be for the upcoming shopping season, the second largest only to the holiday shopping season. The "must have" items include a functional backpack, that is a backpack or carrying case that provides all of the necessary pockets and what not to handle a laptop, iPod, sunglasses and a change of clothes for the gym. One purchase category that is showing a lot of promise is the whole residence/dorm furnishings product line. We are following a lot of buzz from our panelists that only having a cool set of bed linens and towels is hardly enough. Accessories like pillows, blankets, lamps and even art work are increasingly important as well. It seems to us, that these young people are attempting to almost recreate incorporate some of the unique elements of their home bedroom into their new residences away from home this fall. On the clothing and apparel front, expect specialty clothing retailers like Forever 21, Urban Outfitters and Victoria's Secret Pink line all to ring up big sales while The Gap, Old Navy and Aeropostale will most likely see less young purchasers in their stores throughout the rest of the summer. The big electronics and technology-related purchases will include laptop computers, which will probably skew heavily towards Apple's Macbook, portable flash drives and portable hard drives. We will have much more report when our own Back to School Retail and Shopping Report is released in three weeks.