2010 could not get here fast enough. And with the new year comes new numbers on how retailers performed over the holiday season. I’m anxiously awaiting the reports to see if some of the big changes and new strategies from various retailers paid off as they’d hoped. In the meantime, I’m still catching up on my heavily ignored inbox and piles of research that needs to be consumed in the next 10 days.
I took the the last two weeks off from consulting and blogging but still kept an eye on the retail landscape. I got through about 50 product packets from various retail technology companies and spent a fair amount of time in stores observing holiday shoppers and talking to people about their spending behavior and plans.
Based on reports from the news and the paper, I was expecting to see fewer sales, more shoppers, and much less inventory than in years past. But, in actuality, I saw fewer shoppers and the same amount of sales on larger amounts of inventory.
But in the days leading up to the holidays, I was shocked to find many retail stores, practically empty with what seemed to be a lot of seasonal merchandise (at full price) left to move. Knowing that retailers were “holding off” on sales, I assumed that the merchandise would move when marked down. But for the five stores I visited pre-holiday and post-holiday, all of them seemed relatively empty AND holding onto large amounts of inventory even after dropping the prices.
Knowing the amount of money spent in late November and early December, I assumed that most people had already spent up to their limit for the holidays, leaving them without cash to spend post-holiday and retailers, once again, with excess inventory. This got me thinking about pricing and sales strategies moving forward and how I would address the excess inventory issue if I were in their shoes.
I don’t have an answer today, but in the next few months I plan on crafting a POV on how retailers can use digital to make better buying, pricing, and merchandising decisions to solve this problem. That is one of my New Year’s resolutions!
