Online shopping season has started
Chip Hearn knows what you did at your work computer Monday. And he promises not to tell your boss.
Surreptitious online holiday shopping may not be the most honorable use of company time, but it is helping lift the fortunes of Hearn and many other local retailers at a precarious time in the nation's economy.
For Hearn, who runs the Peppers.com hot-sauce site from Rehoboth Beach, Monday's touted start of the online holiday shopping season -- known as "Cyber Monday" -- is more of a marketing shtick than a real phenomenon. He's been busy since the nation started digesting its turkey Thursday night.
"Black Friday is also a big, big Internet day, because they have nothing to do, they're off work," he said. Saturday was dead, but Sunday, for reasons known only to his legions of hot-sauce fans, was also off the charts -- a "monster" day, as Hearn put it.
Yet at some local "e-tailers," it's also clear that the boost provided by Internet sales hasn't been as powerful as they had hoped so far this year.
To some extent, America's deal-hunters have increasingly turned to the Web, but that's also made it even more crucial for Web retailers to maneuver to stay competitive -- by offering free shipping, or touting the discounts that are cutting into all retailers' bottom lines this year.
"People are looking for more bargains, they're looking for sales," said Kathy Gallagher, vice president of Michael Gallagher Jewelers in Bear, which sells jewelry nationally through its MGallagherJewelers.com Web site.
A survey conducted for the National Retail Federation this past weekend found that 84.6 million consumers planned to shop online from home or work Monday, up from 72 million in 2007 and 61 million in 2006. Surveyors found that 84 percent of retailers were planning a special promotion for Cyber Monday, up from 72 percent last year. Nearly a fourth will offer free shipping.
"On the Internet, we are seeing an increase" in business, said Hearn, who is offering free shipping for orders of more than $75 for the first time this year. "In the bricks-and-mortar store, we are not."
In some cases, Web sites are seeing solid traffic, but limited spending. At other sites, the regulars are there, but newcomers are scarce.
"We usually see a little bit of an increase every year," said Braeden Redfearn, who runs MeatAndSeafood.com with his wife, Diana. "We're not seeing a lot of new customers."
The next two weeks will be the busiest time of the year at FineStationery.com, which specializes in higher-end cards and stationery. "The holiday card tradition is a very strong one, so we're seeing numbers of orders holding on to our expectations," said Matthew B. Swanson, CEO.
At CrabCakeExpress.com in Fenwick Island, the solid bump in business that the holiday season brings has arrived -- after a brief hiccup. "Things are right on course," said co-owner Scott Fornwalt. "About a month ago, we had a drop for a couple weeks, then all of a sudden, it picked back up."
By the time it's over, the holidays may not give U.S. e-tailers quite the bump they were hoping for. The market research firm ComScore predicts flat growth for online spending, compared with a 19 percent increase last holiday season.
ComScore reported Sunday that online spending was up a modest 2 percent for Thursday and Friday, compared with the year-ago period. Other studies seemed to imply that while spending was down, online browsing is up.
This story contains information from the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and USAToday.
source: delawareonline.com
