Bon-Ton Sales Inch Up

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 6/18/2007 12:00:00 AM

York, Pa. —

The Bon-Ton Stores made a smart buy. The company continues to break out monthly comparable store sales for its legacy Bon-Ton stores separately from the 142-door Carson's group of stores it acquired last year from Saks Inc., and the retailer reported that while May comps for Bon-Ton slipped 5.3%, the Carson's comps jumped a respectable 4.9%.

Taken together, this made for a company-wide yield of a 1.2% comp gain in May.

Home textiles performance received no comment in remarks by Anthony Buccina, vice chairman and president – merchandising, who enumerated the month's category winners (all were in apparel) and losers, which did include furniture.

The $3.4 billion, 277-door Northern regional department store operator said sales increased 1.0% to $234.7 million in May, and year-to-date (17 weeks) sales were up 22.4% to $972.3 million, again due to the extra heft provided by the Carson's March 2006 acquisition.