The Official Fluid Blog

Williams Sonoma recently released their Q2 results and they were eye opening. First, overall sales were down by 4.6%, which is obviously a source for concern.  The trend is clear that overall retail spending is down broadly, with low cost retailers being the notable exception (Walmart’s sales were up 2%).

In the face of these trends there are a few things that stand out. First, same store sales were down an eye-opening 8.6% in May but an even greater amount – 14% – in July. Obviously this isn’t a number that will make anyone feel good. Nor is the trend positive.

On the bright side, at least from Fluid’s perspective, is that web sales were up by 11.7%. One can only hope this stark contrast between same store sales and online sales will finally drive home the point that the web is of growing importance to any retailer’s strategy and, in fact, is the biggest (and perhaps only) current opportunity for improvement.

I think this quote from Jack Hruska, executive VP at Bloomindales, illustrates the current situation best:

“Still, those retailers ‘who play up their strengths will emerge stronger when the economy comes back than those who retreat or scale back,’ Mr. Hruska added. ‘We’ve seen that time and time again.’”

Now is clearly no time to pull back from investment in the online channel.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 9:34 pm and is filed under E-Commerce, Online Retail / Interactive Merchandising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.