Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 4, 1994                   TAG: 9402040099
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHAINS' SALES SKID

Record cold temperatures and ice storms kept shoppers out of the stores last month, a fact that showed up in sales reports filed Thursday by the nation's major retail chains.

Although sales generally were poor, "January is really not an important month; it's a markdown month," said Karen Sack, a retailing analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York.

Catalog sales continued to do well, said Michael Niemira, an economist with Mitsubishi Bank in New York.

Here are January sales reported by retailers with operations in Western Virginia. Same-store or comparable-store sales refer to sales at stores open more than a year.

Charming Shoppes Inc., which operates Fashion Bug stores: sales of $60.5 million, up from $60.3 million the previous January. Same-store sales down 9 percent. Sales for the year ended Jan. 29, up 6 percent to $1.3 billion; same-store sales down 2 percent.

Hechinger Co.: sales of $56 million, down 6 percent overall and 8 percent at comparable stores. For the quarter, sales were $482.3 million, up 16 percent overall and 3 percent at comparable stores.

Heilig-Meyers Co.: sales up 44.5 percent to $50.4 million; same-store sales up 8.4 percent.

Kmart Corp.: sales up 9.7 percent to $2 billion; same-store sales up 2.1 percent. For the year, sales were $8.5 billion, up 5.3 percent overall, 2.9 percent at comparable stores.

Lowe's Cos. Inc.: sales of $350.9 million, up 14 percent. Same-store sales were flat.

May Department Stores Co., which owns Hecht's and Payless ShoeSource stores: sales of $539.3 million, up 8.5 percent overall, 5 percent at comparable stores.

J.C. Penney Co. Inc.: sales up 8 per cent to $1 billion; same-store sales up 4.6 percent.

Sears Merchandise Group: sales were $1.66 billion, 9.9 percent above restated revenues of January 1993. Same-store sales up 7.9 percent.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.: sales of $5.1 billion, up 22 percent overall and 5 percent in comparable stores. Wal-Mart stores had an 8 percent increase in same-store sales, but Sam's Club same-store sales were down 6 percent.

Woolworth Corp.: sales down 7.2 percent to $497 million in January and 2.7 percent for the year, to $9.5 billion. Same-store sales up 2.2 percent for the month and and unchanged for the year.