In our last few entries, we have
focused primarily on the all-important holiday season. We have looked at some
need to know basics for the liquidation reseller such as planning ahead,
getting your inventory in early and starting your 4th quarter
out on the right foot by being prepared for the busy Holiday season! We even
explored some holiday trends such as the self-gifting phenomenon, remember
consumers are not planning on taking a break from their normal purchases and we
have the data to back it up, more on that later. This
week we are going to focus solely on the numbers, and they all point to an
excellent season for E-commerce, brick and mortar and especially retailers who
have a leg in both worlds.
Adobe released its Retail Unwrapped
2018 Holiday Predictions Report this week. The report defines the holiday
season as November 1st to December 31st. Granted
some may say (us included) that the actual season starts much earlier,
mid-October and ends in late January when the gift card spending finally dies
down but this debate will have to wait for another day. So what can we expect
from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31?
First, let’s go online where there
is significant growth expected this year. 2018 online purchases are projected to be $124 Billion or
nearly a 15% increase over 2017. 1 in every 6 dollars spent this holiday season
will be spent online.
What about traditional retail? This
is also projected to have a nice bump in sales this year with a 4.5% expected
growth over the 2017 holiday season which is quite respectable growth. There is
an interesting trend highlighted in this report which goes a long way towards
explaining how big internet retailers push into physical stores. Brick and
Click that’s a store with an online and physical presence is seeing a much
higher rate of sales, conversion than brick or online only. Consumers are
getting used to the idea of taking potential purchase for a test run in the physical
store and then later buying the item online at a discount.
Next, let’s talk turkey and
Thanksgiving Weekend, Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Is this still a big deal?
With sales starting earlier each year are these big shopping days getting
watered down? No, quite the opposite for online retail. $23.4 Billion is the
projected total for online sales from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, with 7.8
billion of that total coming from Cyber Monday alone.
Let’s talk golden hours, no not
photography here but the golden hours of e-commerce. Cyber Monday has a very
tight and lucrative window of selling, those golden hours are from 7 to 10 PM
Pacific time, this three-hour window is expected to generate the same sales as
an average holiday season day. All told this weekend represents 19% of the
total online holiday sales so be prepared for it!
A few more interesting tidbits can
be taken from this report; smartphones are where consumers are doing most of
their online shopping with the bulk of sales coming from mobile apps. Online
retailers will also benefit this year from an extra shopping day this year between
Cyber Monday and Christmas 28 days in total. Last, remember our look at
self-gifting? $1 of every 7 dollars spent online this year is going towards
gifts for themselves.
There is a lot of encouraging news
in this report for brick, click, and brick & click retailers alike and if
you’re not getting geared up now, you could be missing out big on a very
promising holiday season. Remember we have the numbers to back it up!