Posts Tagged ‘back to school’
Back-to-School Sales: What Do They Say of the Holiday Season?
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
In attempts to prepare for the upcoming and largely unpredictable holiday season, retail stores and experts debate whether they can rely again on back-to-school sales figures for answers.
Including back-to-college sales, back-to-school spending makes up the second largest retail season of the year. Nielsen predicted, then confirmed through findings that this past season was “shorter but more intense.” Consumers had waited for more aggressive sales and promotions to appear as the first day of school drew near.
In anticipation of a slower season, retailers cut back-to-school inventories in anticipation of a slower season, according to The New York Times . But consumers also cut their spending, resulting in double-digit sales declines and more fall merchandise left on their shelves.
Sales of digital cameras, MP3 players, desktops and printers all went down during the back-to-school season, according to CNET News . But expected declines in notebook sales and the introduction of new product categories make the holiday season difficult to compare to the months before.
In efforts to cope, retailers have been offering more bargains to move inventory throughout the next two months – resulting in a more drawn-out holiday season than they usually have to bear.
“While low inventory levels may enable retailers to avoid ‘fire sales,’ consumers are looking for deals and value,” said Stacy Janiak, Deloitte ’s U.S. retail expert.
Considering such expectations, discounters fared well during the back-to-school season, and are predicted to be consumers’ primary destination for holiday shopping. After Deloitte found that more consumers will shop at dollar stores for their back-to-school needs, the National Retail Federation found that about 70 percent of consumers planned to shop at discount stores this holiday season.
After offering school supplies for as little as 5 cents each – then seeing growth in September and October – Wal-Mart will continue week-to week savings and Rollback sales throughout the holiday season. It hopes to save consumers an additional $200 million the holiday season, as it predicts low single-digit comparable sales growth going into 2009.
In the meantime, retailers are still advised to promote their deals and values.
“Retailers will likely not be penalized for their lean staffing levels since consumers are focused on value rather than on other factors,” Janiak said. “As we saw in the back-to-school season, price-oriented retailers have an edge in this environment.”
Tags: back to school, christina lee, Deloitte, holiday shopping, national retail federation, Nielsen
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Back to School Special - Seasonal Trending
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
In order to maximize your profitability during seasonal changes, specifically with the back-to-school season, you need to remove the guesswork. You need to know exactly how the market is going to behave to make the most money.
Predicting the Future
How can you know when the peak sales are going to drop off? You can’t predict the future can you? Of course we can’t predict the future, but we can learn from our past.
Retailers keep track of what happened previous years to know how to effectively sell this year. Managers order enough calculators not only to get them through the back-to-school sale, but also the first few weeks of school. They know how to plan for this because of what happened last year.
The same is true with eBay. If you could see what happened last year with calculator sales, you could know when sales are going to start to drop-off.
With a market research tool like HammerTap, you can know what happened last year. With information like that, you can in a sense predict the future.
I used HammerTap to research calculator sales last year. I researched calculator sales for four weeks starting on August 23, 2006.
Below are the results by-week. Pay attention to how the Listing Success Rate (LSR) and Average Sales Price (ASP) change during the four weeks of sales.
The Dropping-Off Point
So when do sales drop off? Sales during Week 2, August 31 thru September 6 were the highest in both LSR and ASP. During this week, you can sell the most calculators for the highest price possible.
After September 6, the Average Sales Price drops rapidly. In one week you go from $66.85 to $53.95, a difference of $12.90. This is a huge drop in profit. While sales are steady at 77%, you are not making nearly as much per calculator.
Depending on your cost of the product, September 6 is your drop-off point. Even though sales are still high (that’s your Listing Success Rate) you may not be making enough money on each sale to cover your costs.
What’s your strategy then? Try to sell all of your calculators during Week 2 above to increase both your success rate and selling price. Selling during this week is going to maximize your profits for this product during the back-to-school season.
However, each product is different, and this is just one example. In order to maximize the sales of your products during seasonal and holiday trends like this one, you really have two options: 1) Try and guess when the optimal time to sell is or 2) Use a research tool like HammerTap.
Tags: advice, back to school, Generating More Sales, HammerTap, product trends, Sales, seasonal trends, tips
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