Hold on tight, retailers: You are about to experience your biggest sales week of the year, if forecasts are accurate.

ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based company that counts foot traffic, predicts that this coming pre-Christmas week “will generate the largest weekly sales volume of the year,” surpassing the week of Black Friday.

“Stores and malls are going to see business picking up as droves of consumers tick off the final items on their shopping lists,” said Bill Martin, ShopperTrak founder, in a statement.

The measurement service notes that while store traffic and retail purchases have generally been up this year, traffic fell off slightly last week from the year before. ShopperTrak attributes this to the extra full weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which gives shoppers more time to do their holiday shopping, as well as unseasonably mild weather, which hampered sales of winter clothing.

ShopperTrak’s forecast dovetails with the results of surveys that show that most Americans have not finished their holiday shopping.

JCK