Here’s how wintry conditions impacted Whatcom spending in early 2019
While the cold weather in early 2019 made it tough to get out of the house, it didn’t slow down retail sales.
Whatcom County tallied $1.04 billion in taxable retail sales during the first quarter of 2019, according to new data from the Washington State Department of Revenue. That’s up 2.8% compared to a year earlier. Retail trade, which focuses on things sold in stores, was up 6.5% during the same time period to $478.6 million.
February was a good time to hunker down at home. It was the coldest February in 70 years, featuring lowland snow, arctic winds and power outages. The average temperature was 32.2 degrees for the month, according to the National Weather Service’s Seattle office.
Whatcom County retail categories that had strong increases include furniture (up 20.3% year-over-year), sporting goods (up 14.4%) and electronics (up 9.7%). Car sales were down 5.3% while sales at big box stores were down 5.7%
The northern communities posted some of the biggest increases in retail trade sales. One reason for the increase was because Washington state made changes that required tax collection from online retailers outside collection through the Marketplace Fairness Act. Communities like Blaine and Sumas deal with a lot of online shipping that is picked up by Canadian shoppers at U.S. mailboxes.
Retail trade in Sumas rose 36.9% year-over-year, while Blaine’s retail trade sales were up 35.1%.
This story was originally published August 16, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
