SEASON?S GREENINGS: A child shops for a Christmas tree. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

The winter shopping graph is following the autumnal curve. With the Christmas and New Year buying trends treading the Puja path, all-year shopping has clearly caught on in Calcutta.

?Every subsequent year, the year-end surge to shop is less than the previous year. December sales would comprise a whopping 40 per cent of annual sales earlier, but now retailers don?t need to depend on this period any more,? reveals Rahul Saraf, developer of Forum.

So, exit seasonal shopping peaks. With little things selling big and big things selling little in the run-up to Christmas and New Year, waiting for the last few weeks of the year doesn?t make great business sense any more.

Ask Naveen Misra, unit head of Shoppers? Stop, who reports a ?standard footfall? this month. ?Considering that the city has grown and not many new stores have opened, this no-growth situation isn?t all that good.?

Though there might not have been a dip in absolute numbers, a slump in relative growth is cause enough for concern. Where have all the big buyers gone?

Saraf offers the ?impulsive buyer? theory that dots the annual calendar of the mall shopper. Naveen of Shoppers? Stop adds ?the postponement of many weddings to January? as a reason for the December slump.

Harjeet Singh, manager of Nik Nish, declares that Valentine?s, Rakhi and Diwali have ?easily taken over? Christmas sales. The year-end increase, he grumbles, is ?too marginal to talk about?.

But all?s not slow on the retail racks, with music, toys, gifts and cards being fast movers. ?This is the time when the sales peak, with a major jump in the greetings cards section. New Year is a big boom, simply because of the universal feelings attached to it,? says Gautam Shroff of Archies, City Centre, recording a ?20 per cent rise? in sales as compared with last year.

Gautam Jatia of Landmark is buoyant about Xmas footfall, with ?the average 1,100 count touching almost 2,500? these days.

At Crossword, kids just wanting to have fun are beating the round-the-year trend by pushing their parents towards the toys and CD sections. ?About 35 per cent of our sales are attributed to children and with all schools closed, parents don?t mind picking up Hanuman CDs and Beyblades for the little ones,? smiles Sidharth Pansari of Crossword.