Legacy brick-and-mortar retailers have found themselves falling behind this Thanksgiving season as the Black Friday “holiday” moves closer to becoming an online exclusive event. And as more Black Friday business gravitates towards online shopping, traditional retailers are still learning the ropes of how to take legacy models and move them online – despite posturing from these companies that they have already evolved in this regard.
According to Bloomberg, this Black Friday traditional brick-and-mortar retailers like Lowe’s, Walmart, Lululemon and Kohl’s all dealt with glitches and malfunctioning websites. Marshal Cohen, an analyst at researcher NPD Group told Bloomberg: “It really does show the importance of investing in logistics and technology. They have to be able to handle the online rush.”
For the most part, it has been a relatively solid year for US retailers, and the decent results have ticked up expectations for the holiday season. However, retail stocks pared gains recently due to investor jitters and also due to earnings from companies like Kohl’s and Target that failed to surpass already heightened expectations.
That said, much of the growth for Black Friday appeared to take place online, according to Adobe Analytics. The $643 million spent online through 10AM Eastern time on Black Friday was 28% higher than the year prior. Digital spending was estimated to exceed $6.4 billion on Friday, which would be higher than last year’s Cyber Monday totals.
Meanwhile, as reported earlier, foot traffic at malls and stores seems to be similar to last year’s levels if slightly lower at some locations. For instance, more than 62% of the malls managed by JLL reported the same volume of foot traffic this year as in 2017.
Oliver Chen, an analyst for Cowen & Co, stated: “The story for this year is that healthier in-store traffic combined with outstanding digital growth will lead to strong results at many U.S. retailers.”
