US 2015 Holiday Retail First Take by FBIC

 December 30, 2015
US holiday RETAIL 2015 FIRST TAKE
Source: MasterCard Advisors • US retail sales were up by 7.9% between Black Friday and Christmas Eve compared to the same period last year, according to MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse. Women’s apparel in particular showed robust growth, while men’s apparel declined. • There was double-­‐digit growth in furniture sales, showing that consumers are willing and able to splurge on big ticket items. • Online sales were up by 20% as people shopped from the comfort of their homes. • Amazon reported a record-­‐setting 2015 holiday season, adding 3 million new Amazon Prime subscribers in the third week of December alone and shipping 200 million items. Retailers Ring Up Healthy Sales This Holiday Season Strong online sales and demand for furniture and women’s apparel helped US retail sales grow by a solid 7.9% this holiday season, according to the MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report released on Monday, December 28. The report tracks retail sales across cards, cash and checks from Black Friday through Christmas Eve. “The double-­‐digit growth in furniture sales...shows that consumers are willing and able to splurge on big ticket items,” Sarah Quinlan, Senior Vice President of Market Insights at MasterCard Advisors, said in the report. While shopping at brick-­‐and-­‐mortar stores still accounts for the majority of spending during the holidays, MasterCard Advisors found that e-­‐commerce sales were up by 20% this holiday season as people shopped from the comfort of their homes or at work. Earlier this month, a report by First Data that examined payments from October 31 through December 14 found that online sales growth was outpacing sales growth at physical stores. Heading into the holiday rush, apparel sales had been soft at many retailers, with chains from Macy’s to Target to Dick’s Sporting Goods saying that unseasonably warm weather appeared to be keeping consumers from purchasing boots, coats and other cold-­‐
weather gear. As warmer temperatures hung on throughout December, there were reports that apparel retailers were missing out on millions of dollars in clothing sales this holiday season. However, MasterCard Advisors’ data suggests that consumers ended up DEBORAH WEINSWIG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR–HEAD OF GLOBAL RETAIL & TECHNOLOGY [email protected] US: 917.655.6790 H K: 852.6119.1779 CN: 86.186.1420.3016 Copyright © 2015 The Fung Group. All rights reserved. 1
buying clothing after all. The firm found that women’s apparel saw robust growth, while sales of men’s clothing declined, dragging down the growth rate for the category overall. MasterCard Advisors also said in its report that low gas prices were likely a factor in spurring consumers to spend more this holiday season. AMAZON IS ON fire, SHATTERING RECORDS Amazon reports that it had an absolutely massive holiday season, the biggest ever in its 21-­‐year history. The company added 3 million new Amazon Prime subscribers in the third week of December alone, with scores of consumers likely lured by free two-­‐day shipping or even two-­‐hour shipping in some areas. More than 200 million items were shipped for free to Prime subscribers during the period. While Amazon does not reveal exactly how many Prime subscribers it has, the company bragged that now “there are tens of millions of members.” It is estimated that some 47 million Americans have a Prime account. The Amazon Fire 7-­‐inch tablet was the company’s best seller. The Fire Kids Edition and Fire HD 6 were also popular. Other top-­‐selling tech-­‐related items on Amazon included smart TVs by Samsung and Roku; Toshiba laptops; GoPro Hero4 cameras; and the Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Fallout 4 and Star Wars: Battlefront video games. Almost 70% of Amazon customers shopped on a mobile device during the holiday period. The number of Prime members in the US who used a smartphone to purchase holiday items more than doubled from last year. The number of customers using Amazon’s mobile app also doubled from 2014. The company processed 33 electronic orders per second from a mobile device on Cyber Monday, which fell on November 30 this year and is traditionally the year’s biggest online sales day in the US. Here are a few more interesting factoids from Amazon about this holiday season: • The company sold enough Jenga sets to reach the top of the Empire State Building more than 70 times over. • It sold more than enough 50-­‐inch TVs to span the average width of the Grand Canyon. • It sold enough running shoes to give every participant of the New York, Chicago and Boston marathons three pairs of shoes, one for each race. • Customers bought so many jeans that, laid end to end, they would cover the driving distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles—nearly 400 miles. • The number of hours that people spent reading The Martian on their Kindles would allow them to make 1,000 trips to Mars. DEBORAH WEINSWIG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR–HEAD OF GLOBAL RETAIL & TECHNOLOGY [email protected] US: 917.655.6790 H K: 852.6119.1779 CN: 86.186.1420.3016 Copyright © 2015 The Fung Group. All rights reserved. 2
Deborah Weinswig, CPA Executive Director—Head of Global Retail & Technology Fung Business Intelligence Centre New York: 917.655.6790 Hong Kong: 852.6119.1779 [email protected] Filippo Battaini [email protected] Marie Driscoll, CFA [email protected] John Harmon, CFA [email protected] Aragorn Ho [email protected] John Mercer [email protected] Shoshana Pollack [email protected] Kiril Popov [email protected] Jing Wang [email protected] Steven Winnick [email protected] HONG KONG: 10th Floor, LiFung Tower 888 Cheung Sha Wan Road, Kowloon Hong Kong Tel: 852 2300 2470 LONDON: 242-­‐246 Marylebone Road London, NW1 6JQ United Kingdom Tel: 44 (0)20 7616 8988 NEW YORK: th
1359 Broadway, 9 Floor New York, NY 10018 Tel: 646 839 7017 FBICGROUP.COM DEBORAH WEINSWIG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR–HEAD OF GLOBAL RETAIL & TECHNOLOGY [email protected] US: 917.655.6790 H K: 852.6119.1779 CN: 86.186.1420.3016 Copyright © 2015 The Fung Group. All rights reserved. 5