Black Friday’s Results and Its Logistics Impact

Another year of holiday shopping madness is nearly in the books, and the Thanksgiving and Black Friday results are out.  What happened and what does it mean for your business? Well, not much changed and holiday shopping appears to be following the same trend as it has been. From both personal experience at the Matt at Millenia in Florida and from reports across the country, in-person shopping is decreasing and online shopping is increasing significantly.  According to Visa, cardholders spent 22% more online shopping than last year and Amazon’s sales rose 29%. Not only are people spending more online, they are doing it over their mobile devices, as well: 26% of Thanksgiving sales were made on mobile devices, according to Adobe.  Meanwhile in retail stores, the traffic was less than usual as retailers spread their sales across the week, and not only on Thursday or Friday. The Mall at Millenia was much less crowded (no fights to find parking!) than last year, and the sales were worse, as well.

So what do these changes mean to your company? If you are a retailer or sell consumer goods, the e-commerce sector is here to stay and its portion of your business will keep growing larger. It is best to keep investing and expanding your e-commerce logistics infrastructure and continuously evaluating your brick and mortar vs. e-comm business plan, including your transportation (especially parcel) contracts, modes and carriers.  Additionally, from a technological perspective, your website needs to be simple and easy to use, as well as adaptive to mobile and able to handle spikes in traffic on heavy shopping days. The easier it is to buy your products, the more business you will do, both on mobile and computer web browsers.

Need assistance in evaluating your adaptiveness to the new e-commerce distribution requirements? Establish can both evaluate your current distribution infrastructure as well as design your improved network and distribution facilities. Give us a call at 212-776-9900 and we’ll discuss any logistics problem with you.