Sales at consumer electronics and appliance retailers fell 5.8 percent year-over-year in September to $8.6 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.
Compared to the prior month, sell-through for the channel was flat, slipping just 0.2 percent from August.
Others fared better. Furniture and home furnishings stores were up 5.3 percent in September year-over-year, and direct sellers like e-tailers, catalogs and broadcast merchants enjoyed a 5.7 percent increase for the month.
Total retail sales, excluding restaurants and auto dealers, were up 1.7 percent from 2014, the agency reported in its monthly tallies.
All figures were adjusted for seasonal variation and for holiday and trading day differences, but not for price changes.
“September retail sales results paint a very mixed picture,” observed Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist for the National Retail Federation (NRF), an industry trade group, who attributed muted month-over-month gains to an unusually warm September and the impact of falling prices over the preceding 12 months.
