A shopper passes “sale" signs as she enters a Sears store in the Provo Town Mall shopping center in Orem, Utah. Lean inventories mean some coveted items might run out of stock early this season.

Bloomberg George Frey

Whether we’ll have a white Christmas only the weatherman can guess, but it’s sure to be a sparse one gauging by the way retailers have set themselves up for the holiday season.

Retailers are trying to avoid the bottom-line bloodbath they suffered during the 2008 holiday season when struggling consumers buttoned down their finances to survive the economic maelstrom.

Stores slashed prices in 2008 but that didn’t stop unsold goods from spilling off shelves into storerooms and then back to warehouses. Those goods were worthless to retailers until they dumped many of those items onto discounters and off-price outlets.

For the most part, retailers have ordered fewer goods for the 2009 season then they did for 2008.

Cargo arriving in the United States from overseas –– the stuff that’s supposed to end up in shopping bags carried by consumers –– is at its lowest level since 2004, according to National Retail Federation report. Container port volume is expected to drop 16.8 percent in 2009, when compared with 2008, according to an IHS Global Insight report released jointly with the retailers’ group.

“They’re certainly keeping inventories lean,” said Paula Rosenblum, a cofounder of Florida-based industry consultants Retail Systems Research. “They’ve done their best so they [won’t] feel the pressure to dump and run” if holiday sales are slow.

Also, retailers have ordered narrower assortments and more conservative styles than in previous years.

“If you’re out [shopping] for basics, you’re fine,” said Michael Levy, a Babson College marketing professor and author of the Journal of Retailing. “If you’re out for something interesting you’re going to have to look a lot harder.

“It’s more the Year of the Boring.”

With retailers on the defensive, consumers may have to strike fast to find must-have gifts on their holiday shopping lists, according to the retail industry analysts. Come mid-December “out-of-stock” signs could replace the “buy one get one” placards now prevalent in stores.

“There are going to be some frustrated parents,” said Cheryl Bridges, of the Texas A&M University Center for Retailing Studies.

Some retailers are employing unusual tactics to avoid finding themselves with barren shelves late in the shopping season.

JC Penney is holding back three times the inventory it did in 2008 –– in both goods and raw fabric –– so it can quickly feed depleted stores or produce hot-selling garments in a pinch.

The Gap Inc. is employing another tactic.

The chain created a line of denim jeans it will sell for $60 each –– about a quarter of high-end denim prices. The line comes in six styles for women and six for men, including up to four shades. The company then bought one fabric that could hold up to the varying dyes and cuts, rather than separate fabrics for each variation.

If store shelves do go empty late in the season, that won’t necessarily be a bad thing for some retailers, said the analysts.

“As long as retailers who are perceived to have certain categories of products have some product in those categories they’ll see sales,” Rosenblum said.

In the end, shoppers will see price cuts on those remaining goods, Rosenblum and the others said.

“I still think that [retailers] will flinch,” Rosenblum said. “That’s the exquisite irony –– if they don’t come out of the chute strong on Black Friday, they’ll start cutting prices.”

pgrimald@projo.com