FREEBIES LIKE RUBIK’S CUBES, T-shirts, mugs, and Godiva chocolates adorned the tables. At least ten different desserts beckoned. People ate as they milled around because there was no room to sit down. Had O+F gatecrashed a party?
Well, you could say that. The festivities at trade group Shop.org’s annual Internet retailing summit, held in New York City in September, celebrated the industry’s glee at the comeback of e-commerce. Participants and speakers alike heralded e-tailing as the single bright spot in a depressed retail business. In his keynote speech, Sears CEO Alan Lacy expressed his confidence in the online channel: “I expect a better holiday season than last year. I don’t think it will be robust, but I do think online is going to be one of the stars of this holiday season. It’s spectacular.”
Although the word “multichannel” was still bandied about, it’s likely to disappear altogether as Internet operations go mainstream. As Lacy told a standing-room-only crowd, any discussion of online retailing must be broadened to reach more customers and expand the whole business rather than just its electronic component.
YOGA, GROOMING, AND JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
Reaching customers is one thing, but it’s quite another to grab just the right one. Don’t miss today’s greatest retail opportunity — the “metrosexual” man. Described in detail by luncheon speaker Marian Salzman, this man is a throwback to the “sensitive” New Age soul of yesteryear, except for updated shopping habits. He shows a marked preference for fashion boutiques, cosmetics, and travel, along with a somewhat mystifying interest in “pattern, tailoring, and thread count.” Like his hip female friends, he responds to product placements on “Sex and the City,” and is a total pushover for targeted e-mail promotions.
There’s more than one way to pander to this man’s tastes. In a panel on the future of e-tailing, Kate Delhagen, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., cited four main trends shaping e-commerce: broadband availability; an increasing Web presence in brick-and-mortar stores, in the form of kiosks, hand-held terminals, signage, and shelf screens; the appearance of store circulars and events online; and the growing presence of catalogs in physical stores and on Web sites. Delhagen noted that the number of U.S. households using the Internet has surged from 43.8 million just three years ago to 67.5 million today. E-commerce, she said, now accounts for 3% of total retail sales; by 2008, that number will be 8%.