‘It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!’ Says Fastlane International
Christmas is ‘only’ 200 days away and web retailers must prepare now for the twin peaks of Cyber Week, warns global courier.
This Sunday marks 200 days until Christmas, and global courier Fastlane International is urging e-tailers and customers to plan now for the Christmas ‘twin peaks’ of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Fastlane International spokesman David Jinks MILT says: ‘Online retailers need to learn from the lessons of last year. Last Christmas saw a record £810million spent on Black Friday alone in the UK, creating 400,000 orders in one day. This sounds great, but companies struggled to fulfil these orders, and there’s good evidence that the sales were at the expense of other trading days such as Boxing Day - which for the first time in seven years was no longer the peak e-commerce day of the year.’
Adds David: ‘Online retailers need to plan thoroughly for the whole of the Christmas sales period. Online retailers had difficulties after Black Friday replenishing the most in-demand items in time for Cyber Monday. This led to a smaller spend of £650m for the second big trading day, and there is good evidence sales were quieter than expected during the first weeks of December.’
David explains: ‘Successful retailers will be already be deep in planning for the 2015 Christmas season: ordering stock; ensuring warehouse and staffing capacity, and organising their logistics campaigns. But e-tailers need to think hard about their Christmas plans and perhaps consider staggering offers more. The hype surrounding Black Friday created a demand spike that strained the delivery infrastructure of many organisations, and dampened trading during the traditionally busy first weeks of December. While overall last Christmas was a success, many consumers were left frustrated by delivery issues which, notoriously, led one major UK courier to stop collecting parcels from retailers entirely for 72 hours as it struggled to deal with its Black Friday backlog.’
David concludes: ‘For the parcel delivery sector, Christmas counts for a good 25% or more of the year’s business. For some e-retailers the figure is considerably larger. Retailers need to ensure fulfilment can match demand through-out the busy season. By staggering offers over Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day, the logistics bottleneck will be eased and savvy customers will still get bargain online prices. Even Santa would find it tricky if everyone sent their Christmas lists to him on just one day!’
Fastlane International is already geared up for Christmas, bookmark this page for national and international Christmas mailing prices: http://www.wedelivertheworld.co.uk/about-us/what-we-do/christmas-present-delivery/
For more information please contact David Jinks, Head of PR, on david@flci.co.uk or by phone on 0208 7584962 (07772 055748 out of office hours)
Leading online courier Fastlane International ® strategically partners with the world's leading, logistics companies, including DHL, UPS and DPD to provide a flexible, cost-effective range of parcel delivery services to over 220 countries worldwide. Huge bulk purchasing power allows Fastlane® to offer highly competitive pricing with no compromise in service quality.
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