Online spending on Thanksgiving rose 28% over last year shares today’s WSJ.
Stores that have not invested heavily and intelligently in their website will not see this gain. The major issue facing indie stores is they haven’t fixed their online presence—after watching the majors spend billions on their e-commerce operations to get back on track.
There’s a big fork in the road coming: + Indie stores that continue with little web presence will fall off the map. + Indie stores that are part of a larger sales funnel and part of a software platform that will succeed online.
Reason: indie stores don’t have the money, time, nor tech know how to do it on their own. It’s not each indie store vs each indie store. Indies will have to team up. As a reference, the only reason Macy’s can spend $50 million on a website is it has hundreds of stores—and even with that investment it’s barley squeaking out a survival against Amazon.
Fact: a store can’t sit out while others get a 28% sales boost. Your doors will close when your competitor gets that increase year over year over year.