Focusing today’s Express Lane on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here’s some articles that I’m reading that I’d like to share:
ComScore estimates e-commerce sales only up 1% on Black Friday. Retail stores only saw a 3% gain, the smallest gain in several years, according to ShopperTrak. The modest sales growth, combined with the deep discounts cutting into profit margins, has already helped send Wall Street into another daily tail spin.
For a further look into the Black Friday numbers, the National Retail Federation released a comprehensive survey into this year’s shopping habits. Seeking Alpha does a great job of digesting and breaking these numbers down.
CNBC has a good look at how Black Friday transpired at one local mall. Good snapshot into the events of this day at one New Jersey mall.
Of course, today is Cyber Monday. Retailers are offering deep discounts and free shipping. Twitter is on fire with people discussing deals and sharing links. Looking forward to seeing the sales figures for today and I wonder what impact social media will have today.
And finally, the industry did have some very tragic events occur on Black Friday when a worker was trampled to death at a Long Island Wal-Mart and two men were killed in a shooting at a California Toys R Us. Very sad and tragic events, indeed.
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Wednesday
November 26, 2008
Over at ecommr, we’ve been adding e-commerce elements related to Black Friday. Head to ecommr to see a roundup of the different banners, homepage landing, and e-mails that retailers are using to promote their Black Friday specials. More will be added as we come across them.
As a related note, it appears (to me) that retailers are being more aggressive in their marketing for Black Friday, with earlier campaigns and with more detail. Normally, promoting specific price points for comes right before Thanksgiving. But this week has been filled with “online previews”, television commercials, and e-mail marketing that seems to be more aggressive and detailed than years past. Retailers are trying to step up their game in order to capture a larger piece of the shrinking sales pie.
Walmart and Target both have their Black Friday ads online and featured prominently on their homepages. Kohl’s even has an entire section on their site that allows customers to browse the Black Friday ad and make a printable shopping list.
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Tuesday
September 2, 2008
New Orleans has a great mix of local and national retail brands that I think is an example for many other urban areas. Last year, I got to get down to New Orleans and really enjoyed, among other things, the Riverwalk Marketplace. The national brands co-existing with local stores was a nice balance to see With Hurricane Gustav having moved on shore and away from New Orleans, retailers will be allowed back in to the city, on Wednesday, in order to check on damage and assess their properties. I hope there is a speedy recovery for everyone involved in the storm.
As discussed over the weekend, many retailers prepared well for this storm in order to reopen their stores in the wake of the storm. USA Today has more on the post-storm plans in their article, Businesses eye quick recovery effort after Gustav. Home Depot has many trucks staged and ready to roll into the affected area and Walmart really highlights all of the things that they learned in the aftermath of Katrina that made this preparation better, which in turn should make the recovery smoother and quicker.
Speaking of Walmart: In this article regarding the 1200 evacuees that found themselves in Hanceville, Alabama, there’s a good note about Walmart’s local response to the situation:
“Wal-Mart Distribution Center called and asked what we need,” Kilgo said. “They brought a huge truck load of supplies, including drinks, snacks and cleaning supplies.”
If you have any more information on retail-related recovery efforts, please let me know.
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Hurricane Gustav continues to develop into a monster storm in the Gulf of Mexico. With the tragic lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, residents and retailers alike are taking a more proactive approach to the arrival of this hurricane.
Yesterday, I talked about how well Home Depot was using their Twitter account to communicate hurricane tips and store information. Taking a look at the Home Depot Twitter, it appears that they have a dozen stores staying open all night in the Gulf Coast area. They’ve also brought in out of town volunteers to work the stores, allowing the local employees to secure their homes and evacuate. In addition to providing valuable information online, they’re also bringing supplies to the communities in need and staying open to allow people the time to get what they need. Home Depot also offers a section on their website with a wealth of information related to hurricane preparation.
The Wall Street Journal profiled the Walmart emergency operations center in Bentonville. Within the operations center, the retailer monitors the storm, communicates with the stores in the path of the storm, and plans on how to bring needed supplies, merchandise, and resources to the affected region. Walmart rapidly deployed resources to the Gulf Coast region after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and can serve as a model for retailer involvement in disaster relief.
Winn-Dixie has a list of their store closings on their website. Nola.com has several photos showing a very empty Winn-Dixie in New Orleans.
Publix is the sponsor of a website called Hurricane Gustav Resources. This website seems to be a great resource of shelters that are open and evacuation information.
Obvious business motives aside, it is great to see these businesses working so hard to assist their communities. If you know of other retailers working to assist the Gulf Coast, please let me know in the comments.
Photo from Flickr user Maitri, used under Creative Commons.
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The stimulus checks have been (presumably) spent, back to school shopping is underway, and the retail sales numbers for July are in and they are, well, pretty ugly. A lot of retailers posting negative same-store-sales numbers for the month, many of them posting numbers that fell below Wall Street’s expectations. Wall Street is responding – as of 12:30, the S&P Retail Index is down around $7.
The negative results are hitting all segments of retailers – from department stores to the mall, teen retailers to mass market merchandisers. Wal-Mart posted a positive sales increase of 3.0%, but that is less than the 3.5% increase that Wall Street was looking for. Target saw same store sales drop 1.2% in the month of July and warn that August isn’t going to be much better. JCPeneny’s sales dropped 6.5% but raised their Q2 guidance “due to better than expected sell-through of promotionally priced merchandise and continued expense management measures.” Kohl’s saw a steep 10.4 drop in same store sales in the month.
Gap saw negative numbers across all brands – Old Navy down 16%, Banana Republic down 8%, and Gap North America down 6%. When are they going to spin off the Old Navy brand, sell it, and let someone else deal with the turnaround?
Teen retailers aren’t seeing the Back to School numbers they hoped for with American Eagle down 7%, PacSun was down 4%, Abercrombie & Fitch (as a company) was down 7% (with only A&F proper posting flat numbers, up 1% for the month. Hollister was down 11% – blowing away the 4.1% decrease expected by analysts), but Aeropostale saw sales jump 13%.
More coverage from CNN/Money, Forbes, and Marketwatch.
Reminder, all of July’s numbers are available to analyze over at our partner site, Retail Numbers.
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A few of the stories I’m reading and wanted to share today:
John Zogby’s got a very insightful look into the political trends of retail consumers and dives behind the numbers to make sense of it all. He looks at presidential election polling numbers, the retailers the customers shop at, and how this relates to the retailers’ branding.
J.Crew’s website has had their share of mistakes and downtime lately. Church of the Customer is talking about the apology e-mail that the retailer sent out to their customers and what this means for the company.
Matt at A New Marketing presents a clean, easily digestable definition of what social media is.
.. and finally – Starbucks is offering a $2 discount on iced beverages in the afternoon when you buy a drink in the morning. I think this is a smart move that should drive repeat business throughout the day. Besides that, I’m selfish and now look forward to saving a little bit of money on my second trip to Starbucks every day.
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Wednesday
August 15, 2007
Good post this morning over at Retail Design Diva talking about how retailers are using Facebook to capture the Back to College crowd:
Students can take a quiz to discover their “decorating style” and (ta-da!) receive a list of products they can buy at Wal-Mart that best reflects their style, and their roommates’, of course. How smart is this?! Students can also search Wal-Mart’s Web site for eco-friendly products or download a shopping list of dorm room pieces. The hip, new items can then be shipped directly to the school (no furniture hauling for dad), making life a lot easier for parents and kids. And let’s be honest, mom and dad are going to be all over that, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. This idea is absolutely brilliant–and I don’t even shop at Wal-Mart.
In a world of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube and a variety of social networking and media sites, retailers could benefit substantially from plugging in. Securing teen and college kids’ dollars is extremely lucrative. Connecting with them on their own platform is invaluable. Apparently, Wal-Mart did its research, because according to the National Retail Federation, the average first-year college student spends $1,112.62 on back-to-school gear. Cha-ching. Who’s in for setting up a MySpace account?
More from Facebook Takes Over the Retail World.
Credit to Wal-Mart to being ahead of the curve of traditional retailers in adopting new technology to reach out to customers. Curious to see how these consumers react to Wal-Mart when Target seems to have a stranglehold on this segment. Could social media technology give Wal-Mart a leg up?
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Wal-Mart held their annual meeting yesterday, holding back no punches with the entertainment:
Mixing business and pleasure, the four-hour event featured performances from such celebrities as Jennifer Lopez, American Idol winner Jordin Sparks and comedian Sinbad.
Sorry – I just find that as a odd mix of entertainment for the meeting.
Margaret Brennan has posted a good blog at the CNBC site with her thoughts from the meeting. Good rundown of some of the information that is interesting, but may have been overlooked by some of the bigger announcements.
This piece struck me as interesting:
After J. Lo finished performing, Lee Scott, Eduardo Castro-Wright and other executives stuck around to do their first press briefing ever. Clearly, Wal-Mart is starting to recognize that shutting out the press doesn’t help us tell their story more accurately. (Scott did say that he didn’t see any friendly faces in the crowd though, making clear he isn’t happy with press coverage or the media’s presence.)
Wal-Mart is very private within the media. As they try to turn things around, they need to realize that they need to be more accessable, put on a more human face, and be more transparent.
You can read more at her blog. More coverage of the event from the Star Telegram.
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Over at Big Box Watch, I’ve noted that Wal-Mart has announced that they are scaling back their expansion efforts. New store growth will be reduced to 170 supercenters next year, down from 270 stores that they had originally planned to open this year.
This move by Wal-Mart is a long time coming. The rate that the retailer grew eventually would have to end. Wal-Mart needs to reevaluate their offerings and fuel growth from within, rather than fuel growth with new stores. Their comp store sales have not been strong in a long time, and now they have to figure out way.
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Consumerist has a detailed report about a worker, who was fired from his job at Wal-Mart, based on a comment he left on MySpace:
The exact quote said “Drop a bomb on all the Walmarts, trailer parks, ghettos, monster truck shows, and retarded fake “pro wrestling” events, and the average I.Q. score would probably double.” This was a silly statement, but in no way was a threat as Walmart said and used as reason for my termination and denying my unemployment benefits. On my “Exit Interview” they checked Gross Misconduct – Integrity Issue (which they describe as: Theft, Violent Act, Dishonesty, or Misappropriation of Company Assets) as the reason I was fired. They wrote on the exit interview that it was a threat posted on website; which it clearly is not.
Consumerist provides a more more detailed account from the fired employee. The comments on the story provide an interesting debate and look at employee vs. employer rights, and how far the line extends outside of the workplace.
We live in a digital age and we have to be careful what trace of our lives we leave online.
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