|
With the
holiday shopping season jingle bell rocking, shippers are straining
under the weight of Americans’ online ordering habits.
Having
reached allotted capacity, UPS told its drivers to stop picking up
packages at six major retailers, including Nike and Gap, to maintain
performance standards, the WSJ reports.
Amazon is even offering a rebate
(we’ve seen $2–$3) for some of the company’s digital products if you
select the “No-Rush Shipping” option, presumably so it can reduce the
strain on its own fulfillment network.
Boom times
We’ll look
back on this past week as a milestone in e-commerce adoption. During a
five-day stretch that included Black Friday and Cyber Monday, online
shopping increased 44% over last year, per the National Retail
Federation.
- Shopify, a platform
that’s home to 1+ million merchants, reported that Black Friday sales
increased 75% annually to $2.4 billion, per Retail Brew. Its stock is up more than 160% this year.
- At the same time, far fewer people are shopping at brick-and-mortar locations. U.S. store visits dropped more than 50% on Black Friday from last year.
Follow the money
The investors with the biggest pockets are making bets on the physical infrastructure that powers e-commerce: warehouses.
- Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported that private equity firm KKR is close to acquiring about 100 warehouses in the U.S. for more than $800 million (the deal could close next week).
- But KKR is playing catchup—fellow PE giant Blackstone bought more than $25 billion worth of industrial properties last year alone.
Bottom line: With
consumers feeling more comfortable shopping online and companies
rapidly expanding their e-commerce infrastructure, the retail industry
has been catapulted years into the future by the pandemic.
+ Dive deeper: 1) A New York Times feature on Shopify and 2) a report on the tech behind e-commerce from Retail Brew and Emerging Tech Brew.
|
I AM A REPUBLICAN BORN AND BRED
IN AMERICA .I BELIEVE IN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.I SERVED IN THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
MAJORED IN GEOLOGY AND MUSIC AND WENT TO ANGELO STATE IN SAN ANGELO, TEXAS
No comments:
Post a Comment