Maybe Glenn bought out Kleiner perkins funded blue nile.:)
<<When outdoorsman Eddie Bauer opened his first store in downtown Seattle, he would catch large, spectacular trout and display them in his storefront window to attract passers-by.
Eight decades later, the Redmond-based retailer is tending to window dressing of another sort. After a yearlong revamp of its online shopping sites, the outdoor-apparel company says it sees more customers flocking to its virtual stores than before.
"We're very optimistic about what's going to happen online," said Troy Brown, Eddie Bauer vice president of e-commerce, referring to the holiday retail season. "We're extremely optimistic."
It's a scenario retail analysts predict will rule the all-important shopping season, with Internet commerce expected to be the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal quarter.
While analysts measure the online retail season in different ways, each has a green Christmas in mind. Forrester Research said online holiday sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas should reach $9.5 billion, a 14 percent jump compared with the same period last year.
Jupiter Media Metrix, which measures online holiday shopping between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, expects sales to grow 17 percent to $13.1 billion.
At comScore Networks, analysts say non-travel-related online sales should jump 27 percent to $13.8 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31.
Any way you slice it, more consumers are using the Internet and more Internet shoppers are buying goods beyond books and CDs.
"Online shopping is a behavior that feeds on itself," said Dan Hess, comScore's vice president. "Retailers are performing very well and consumers are finding it to be a very positive experience."
Perhaps the largest growth has come from the apparel category, which offline retailers such as Eddie Bauer and J. Crew have used to augment store and catalog sales.
The apparel and accessories category was ranked No. 3 in the third quarter, behind computer hardware and office products, according to a comScore report measuring e-commerce. Apparel sales for the three months ended Sept. 30 were $1.3 billion, a 22 percent jump versus a year ago.
Online retail giant Amazon.com gave the category a nod earlier this month when it teamed with apparel companies, including Gap, Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer, to open an apparel store on its site.
While Amazon does not offer revenue figures midquarter, the company has reported strong early interest in its apparel offerings; customers bought 14,487 shirts, 3,254 pairs of shoes and 3,287 pairs of underwear in the first few days of its test apparel site. Speculation that its apparel store will help boost sales has helped pushed Amazon's stock up 18 percent this month.
The growth is online
Eddie Bauer has seen similar trends online. While overall sales from January to October — the last month for which figures were available — fell 11 percent, sales for its Web sites rose 15 percent during the same period.
The company said the online growth occurred even though its catalog circulation has dipped slightly this year.
Jupiter Media Metrix analyst Ken Cassar said online revenue continues to grow, despite a sluggish economy, because the channel is still young. (Online retail sales make up roughly 2 percent of total retail spending.)
"Brick-and-mortar retail is a mature channel," he said. "While we do tend to see growth, the growth is so small because the markets are deeply penetrated."
Broader demographic
Cassar said online retail sales continue to grow along with the size of the Internet population, although spending per consumer is falling. While it appears to be a function of economic weakness, the drop in spending per customer is occurring, he said, because e-commerce shoppers are starting to look more like the average, overall consumer.
"People just coming online are now less likely to be rich like back in 1997 and 1998," he said. "Their holiday budgets tend to be a little smaller."
Still, at Seattle-based Blue Nile, the online jeweler said sales have grown as affluent customers have become more adventurous, branching out from books and airline tickets to larger-ticket items, such as computers and diamond engagement rings.
The company's third-quarter sales grew 78 percent to $15.4 million, and it expects $70 million in revenue for the fiscal year, a 40 percent jump compared with the year before.
Chief Executive Mark Vadon said it's a category that makes economic sense online. "Wal-Mart's average cash register receipt is $7," Vadon said. "If they're buying $7 orders, it's going to be hard to justify that as an e-commerce transaction."
Six fewer shopping days
Even though analysts expect strong holiday sales, they say online retailers still face a huge challenge. The holiday shopping season carries six fewer core days this year, which means daily order volumes should swell.
"That's pretty terrifying for retailers that have been able to accommodate demand, but have strained to do so in years past," said Cassar of Jupiter Media Metrix.
At Eddie Bauer, the company is using its online retail sites to "reconnect" customers with its outdoor heritage. Even perhaps its most loyal fans aren't aware that Bauer, the founder, created the first down jacket after nearly freezing to death during a winter fishing trip in 1935.
The company has redesigned the storefront window in a way, perhaps, that Bauer himself could not conceive.
"The Web is certainly a critical component for our customer," Brown, e-commerce vice president said, "and they have definitely voted and voted positively for the Internet."
seattletimes.nwsource.com |
