Sales for the Thanksgiving shopping period grew 53% year-over-year, the software company said.
Cyber week sales made through a platform that powers more than 300 ecommerce marketplaces grew 53% over 2021, according to the company.
Mirakl said the sales on its platform over the seven-day shopping period ending Cyber Monday (Nov. 28) outperformed the overall growth of global ecommerce sales, which Salesforce pegged at 2% for the Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday stretch.
Mirakl operates marketplaces and dropshipping for B2B and B2C retailers and businesses. Clients include Macy’s, Urban Outfitters, Maisons Du Monde, J. Crew and The Kroger Co.
Mirakl shared the following numbers from the platform for Cyber Week:
"The hundreds of retailers operating online marketplaces across the globe have recognized what the rest of the industry has been slower to acknowledge: marketplaces are the only way to meet customers' need for selection, price and high quality of service, achieve consistent profitable growth, and not only survive but thrive in today's economy," said Adrien Nussenbaum, cofounder and co-CEO of Mirakl, in a statement. "They have dramatically outperformed the market because of their willingness to transform and implement a more innovative and agile model.”
Marketplaces, in which goods from multiple brands are sold through a common channel, are expected to continue to see growth in the years ahead. According to a report this year from Edge by Ascential, third-party marketplaces are projected to account for 60% of ecommerce globally by 2027, and will add $1.3 trillion over that time. Marketplaces can also lead to a big opportunity in advertising through retail media, and Mirakl recently stood up a network of its own to help brands realize it.
One of Mirakl’s most recent launches was from Macy’s. Ahead of the holiday season, the department store retailer launched a third-party marketplace that curates items across 400 bands and 20 categories. It’s designed to add more items to the ecommerce assortment, while brands handle inventory and fulfillment. On the retailer’s recent call with investors, CEO Jeff Gennette said the marketplace was attracting younger customers in the first two months.
“We're adding new content every single day as we continue to scale this,” Gennette said.
Still, plans to buy big-ticket items ticked up.
“Deterioration.” “Gloomy.”
Those were a couple of the words used to describe consumer confidence in May. The Conference Board reported that the index fell to a six-month low amid debt ceiling anxiety and increasing concerns about employment.
“Consumer confidence declined in May as consumers’ view of current conditions became somewhat less upbeat while their expectations remained gloomy,” said Ataman Ozyildirim, senior director of economics at the Conference Board, in a statement. “...While consumer confidence has fallen across all age and income categories over the past three months, May’s decline reflects a particularly notable worsening in the outlook among consumers over 55 years of age.”
The dip among those over 55 came as Congress negotiated a deal over increasing the debt ceiling that included talk of cuts to programs such as social security and Medicare. While officials reached an agreement over Memorial Day weekend, the Conference Board’s survey was fielded prior to that date.
The job picture appears to be more anecdotally cloudy, as the number of consumers reporting jobs as “plentiful” fell to four percentage points to 43.5%. The job market has been consistently robust for nearly three years, as unemployment remains near historic lows. In April, the economy added 253,000 jobs, which remained a positive sign despite being below the gains of prior months. The confidence reading comes ahead of fresh data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.
Despite the declines, there were signs that consumers are not completely pulling back on big-ticket items. Plans to buy big-ticket items such as cars and appliances ticked up on a monthly basis. It’s worth watching whether this extends to providing resilience in other discretionary categories, which have seen a pullback in early 2023.
Nevertheless, the index offered another sign that the consumer mood is getting more pessimistic. It was the fourth time in five months that confidence fell. On Friday, the University of Michigan offered another with a consumer sentiment report that showed a 7% dip.
Brands and retailers must work to reach consumers that are increasingly in less of a buying mood than the month before.
