By Steve Rowen, Partner
12/11/2007
Online shoppers have so far spent more than $18 billion this holiday season. According to metrics produced by comScore Inc., a Virginia-based firm that measures e-tail activity, retailers have already enjoyed an 18 percent gain over last year’s online sales from November 1 – December 6. And despite your take on the need for a “Cyber Monday,” (which presumes that people can only conduct their online shopping once they return to a computer-enabled workplace after Thanksgiving), the good news remains that sales on this year’s November 23 were up: over $700 million on a single day. In fact, comScore’s chairman predicts multiple days between December 1 and Christmas when online sales in a single day pass the $800 million dollar mark.
One of those days was likely to have been yesterday: “Green Monday.”
And while Paula thoughtfully points out in her piece this week how the retail commerce calendar is perpetually flattening, the second Monday in December has earned some degree of buzzworthiness within the online community based purely on recent statistics: for the last few years, the second week in December has been when online retailers have experienced their highest volume of sales all year long.
Last year’s biggest mark was on Wednesday, December 13, at $667 million. And those numbers were encouraging of the notion that people tend to get their online shopping done this week. Paypal, for example, one of the companies that helped spawn the term, saw a 33 percent increase on Green Monday 2006 sales over those of 2005. In fact, the December event’s sales were 11 percent higher than those of its November adversary’s.
But why the second week in December? Wendy Sept, a spokesperson for eBay, told BusinessWeek that "It isn't Black Friday and it isn't Cyber Monday… Green Monday is the day that people actually go online and buy." In fact, eBay has been so successful in its evangelization of the term that several sellers were offering “Green Monday” discount coupons. One of which, a home and garden store, was offering a 40% off coupon for any purchases made yesterday alone: the coupon cost a penny.
And while we certainly recognize why online sellers hope to create some extra buzz surrounded by shipping and promotional offers and deadlines this week, we’re just happy to see that sales (even gift cards) are stronger than expected this year. It will be very interesting to see how these few days’ sales pan out in the much larger scope of annual retail sales. What do you think?
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