Want to know how to spend your next $1?
Don’t waste another dime on bloated channel reporting and vanity metrics.
Don’t waste another dime on bloated channel reporting and vanity metrics.
Here's a look at what retailers are saying about a longer holiday season, and the highly promotional environment.
In the midst of a holiday season where forecasts are typically coming with the words “conservative” and “uncertainty” attached, Lululemon had more positive color for its initial results.
“Black Friday was the biggest day ever in our history in terms of revenue and traffic driven by our results in both North America and around the world, with guests responding well to the innovation we offer across our product assortment,” Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald told analysts on the company’s third quarter earnings call. “We also recognize that the external environment remains challenging with several high-volume weeks still in front of us. That being said, I'm encouraged with the beginning of our holiday season and I am confident in how our brand is positioned in the near and long term.”
The Black Friday record followed a third quarter in which Lululemon posted strong results:
To be sure, Lululemon is facing the same headwinds from inflation and interest rates as others. The company’s forecast for the overall holiday quarter was lower than Wall Street expected and its gross margins are proving to be tough to maintain at a time of inflation. This sent its stock price down about 12% on Friday morning, according to Yahoo Finance.
Yet the performance in Q3 and the opening to the holiday suggests that the company is able to deliver solid results at a time when many specialized retailers are seeing consumers pull back from discretionary spending and seek out deals in a highly promotional environment.
McDonald summed up the reasons for the strong showing this way: “Great products, regular price is still selling, driven off of the uniqueness of the overall brand and position in the market.”
Yet it’s also worth paying attention to how the brand operates across its stores and ecommerce operations.
“In my opinion, the brand’s ongoing investments in omnichannel capabilities are a key factor here,” said Rick Berger, president of omnichannel shopping platform NewStore, in a statement. “By offering features like buy online pick up in-store [BOPIS], making inventory information available online, and offering in-store shopping appointments, Lululemon has set itself apart, allowing its customers to buy products, when, where and how they want.”
Despite how often they are talked about in retail circles, these elements of the shopping experience that cross physical and digital channels have yet to achieve wide adoption across retail. NewStore’s research shows that 54% of brands provide BOPIS, while fewer still provide real-time inventory visibility (31%) or one-on-one appointments (25%).
“If Lululemon continues to double down on omnichannel experiences for its shoppers, the company is in a great position to close out the year and hit its Q4 goals,” said Berger.
Here’s a look at perspective that other retail executives shared in this week’s earnings calls about trending holiday shopping topics:
Costco CFO Richard Galanti said Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the two largest ecommerce selling days in the wholesale company’s history. This, despite ecommerce sales of consumer electronics and appliances being down in the “high single digits” for Q3.
With higher prices for gas and food amid inflation, consumers are on the lookout for deals. This was forecast to have an impact on the holidays, and observations from executives like Vera Bradley CEO Robert Wallstrom are baring it out.
“We saw weakness in October, and as we got towards Black Friday, we saw the consumer begin to pick up during Black Friday and that momentum has continued past Black Friday,” said Wallstrom. “What we have definitely seen, though, is the importance of promotional activity as part of that stimulation, that the consumer definitely is looking for the deal, is kind of returning to that historical Black Friday mentality.”
Many retailers are calling the holiday season highly promotional, but that’s not necessarily true across categories, said Sumit Singh, CEO of pet product ecommerce service Chewy.
“Compared to Q3, the promotional environment is elevated in Q4. This is the normal seasonal pattern we see every year heading into the holidays,” Singh said. “But within the context of Q4 itself, we believe the promotional environment remains rational and more or less in line with what we have seen in previous holiday periods.”
Larger retailers sought to get the holidays off to a big start with deal events in October. This also had the effect of introducing deals into the marketplace earlier in the season, which has impact on the specialty retailers in ecommerce that typically stick to full-price, said Elizabeth Spaulding, CEO of styling service Stitch Fix.
“In fiscal Q1, the retail industry experienced a meaningful pull forward of the holiday promotional environment, which continues to be more pronounced than expected due to weak consumer sentiment and excess inventories,” Spaulding said. “We believe this resulted in lower client spending and also had a large impact on our net active clients, which declined 11% year over year.”
Stitch Fix is experimenting with limited-time promotions as it seeks to move inventory and lift slumping sales. It is seeing a “halo effect” for full-price merchandise by taking this approach, Spaulding said. But it must weigh how making items available at a lower price impacts the brand.
“We had our first Black Friday-Cyber Monday event, which we saw good lift in terms of what we were able to offer our clients in that window,” Spaulding said. “But I think we really want to strike a good balance of being levant in those seasonal time periods, but ultimately do what we do best, which is differentiating based on style, discovery, fit.”
While early deals and big cyber weekend events are shaping the season so far, there could still be a strong finish for the taking, as well. When people are stretching their wallets and holding out for deals, last-minute shopping could be even more active than usual. Signet Jewelers is seeing both sides, said CEO Gina Drosos.
On Black Friday-Cyber Monday, “We saw omni traffic up double digits, so a lot of people in stores but a lot of people online. And we saw our online revenue up mid single digits, so that was great that we see people buying at the time,” Drosos said. “But a lot of people, we see browsing, and they'll be waiting, we think, until later in the season, making sure they get the very best value that they can.”
The cuts amount to 4% of the ecommerce platform's workforce.
On ebay's campus. (Photo by Flickr user Kazuhisa OTSUBO, used under a Creative Commons license)
eBay is set to become the latest ecommerce platform to conduct layoffs.
The company announced plans on Tuesday to lay off 500 employees, which amounts to about 4% of its workforce. Layoffs were set to take place over the next 24 hours, the company said Tuesday evening.
In an SEC filing, CEO Jamie Iannone said the decision to make layoffs came after consideration of the macroeconomic environment and where the company could best invest for the long-term.
Iannone said the moves “are designed to strengthen our ability to deliver better end-to-end experiences for our customers and to support more innovation and scale across our platform.”
“Importantly, this shift gives us additional space to invest and create new roles in high-potential areas — new technologies, customer innovations and key markets — and to continue to adapt and flex with the changing macro, ecommerce and technology landscape,” Iannone wrote. “We’re also simplifying our structure to make decisions more effectively and with more speed.”
eBay is one of the oldest ecommerce platforms, and remains an active marketplace for both new and resale items. The San Francisco-based company has yet to report results for the fourth quarter of 2022. In the third quarter, the company said gross merchandise volume was down 11%, and revenue was down 5% year-over-year.
Yet the company has also continued to invest. In 2022, it acquired collectibles platform TCGPlayer and myFitment, which provides parts and accessories for automotive and powersports. It also opened a secure vault for trading cards, and launched livestreaming.
eBay is also seeing a boost from advertising, with revenue driven by promoted listings up 19% in the third quarter.
With the layoffs, eBay joins other tech companies that provide the infrastructure of ecommerce in making layoffs. Amazon, Shopify, Salesforce, BigCommerce and Wayfair have all recently announced layoffs. Technology giants like Meta, Google and Microsoft have also made job cuts.
It comes as inflation is weighing on consumers’ discretionary spending, and the return to more in-person shopping throughout 2022 led to a correction following aggressive hiring during the pandemic.