Today’s InternetRetailing newsletter is our last of the year and we go out on a somewhat sober note. The year gone by has brought new highs with record online sales, new technologies and new infrastructure to support the increasingly multichannel way in which digital shoppers want to buy. In all, 2014 has seen fast change in the way that we shop.
But it’s also been a year in which, when those new infrastructures and technologies were put to the test at peak shopping, they failed to stand up to demand. Today we report on an IMRG/MetaPack study that finds retailers and logistics providers were overwhelmed by an ‘online tsunami’ when shopping peaked on Black Friday.
There’s another challenge ahead, with £1.3bn expected to be spent over the course of Boxing Day and Christmas Day. In recent years Boxing Day has been the biggest online shopping day of the year and we’ll be interested to see how systems stand up to the strain.
Today we also report on John Lewis as it extends click and collect ordering ahead of an expected last-minute rush, on Thorntons as it restates its faith in multichannel even as it warns on profits, on Quiksilver, and Bathrooms.com.
In this, our final newsletter of the year, we wish our readers a Merry Christmas and a very happy and successful New Year. Our first newsletter of 2015 will be on January 6 when we’ll be reporting on the first of the Christmas retail results.
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