By Martha C. White on Holiday Blog

  • Cyber Monday is no longer a one-day tradition

    Experts say online sales are expected to rise by 12 percent as millions of Americans hunt for holiday gift deals during the biggest Web shopping day of the year. NBC's Diana Alvear reports from an Amazon fulfillment center in Phoenix, Ariz.

    By Martha C. White

    Maybe “Cyber Week” would be a better name.

    Just as Black Friday spilled over into Thanksgiving night, Cyber Monday has gone from being a one-day event to a tentpole for more than a week’s worth of promotions and discounts. Online sales on Thanksgiving, historically not a banner day for e-commerce, jumped 17 percent, according to research conducted by IBM. On Black Friday, online sales grew by 21 percent.

    As of noon ET on Cyber Monday, onlines sales were up 24.1 percent compared to last year, according to data from  International Business Machines Corp. In 2011, the early Cyber Monday year-over-year growth was 15 percent. IBM tracks transaction data from 500 U.S. retail websites.

    This year’s kickoff to the holiday shopping season was intensely competitive, with retailers offering price-matching and pricing merchandise aggressively. Shoppers responded, spending $59.1 billion over Black Friday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. Research company comScore said online shoppers spent a record $1 billion on Black Friday and predicted that today’s sales will hit $1.5 billion.

    To keep shoppers' momentum going strong, retailers are offering special Cyber Monday deals in the hopes of ringing up another $1.5 billion in online sales. CNBC's Courtney Reagan reports.

    For the past couple of years, stores have pushed their Black Friday openings earlier in a bid to get shoppers off their computers and into stores. With stores opening as early as 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving this year, online retail upped the ante and started promotional blitzes even earlier.

    Cyber Monday was first conceived in 2005, two years before the iPhone even existed. Today, ubiquity of smartphones and tablets also makes this spillover inevitable, as users comparison-shopped electronically even while in brick-and-mortar stores over the long weekend. And thanks to widespread penetration of residential broadband access, Americans don’t have to wait to get back to the office on Monday to have the entire Internet at their fingertips.

    “Consumers shopped in store, online and on mobile devices simultaneously to get the best bargains,” IBM’s report noted.

    “[Cyber Monday] continues to be strong, and what's happening is that we're seeing just more shift to the web channel overall even on other days like Black Friday and Thanksgiving,” said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.

    Amazon.com is a big likely winner for Cyber Monday sales, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at the NPD Group. “They’re doing a really good job of suggestive selling. They’re making the site much more efficient,” he said. “You have to basically put them in the forefront.”

    Analysts had high hopes for big-box stores including Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy, and said retailers with a strong online counterpart to their physical stores, like J. Crew, Ann Taylor, Apple and Williams-Sonoma, were in a good position to take advantage of Cyber Monday shopping. 

    In an interview with CNBC Europe, Eric Abensur, group CEO of Venda, said that savvy retailers could avoid the threat of cannibalizing sales by using online and mobile promotions to drive customers to their physical stores, while other analysts said the strong showing over the weekend could be at today’s expense.

    “Our sense is that while today is still the major day of the cyber period, it may not be off-the-charts historic,” said Joe Feldman, a senior analyst at Telsey Advisory Group. Feldman said overall spending is likely to grow over last year, but consumers are spreading out their purchases over a much longer time period than before.

    “What we’re seeing is the front loading of the holiday business,” Cohen said. He said the early promotional hype could backfire if consumers’ appetite for spending fades. “They’ve sort of shot themselves in the foot.”

    But Andrew Lipsman, vice president of industry analysis at comScore, Inc., disagreed with that assessment. “I think it's a misconception that Thanksgiving or Black Friday promotions must pull from Cyber Monday,” he said. “They may pull dollars from later in the season or represent incremental spending.”

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  • Cowabunga, dude! Retro toys are hot this holiday season

    toysrus.com

    Remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? They're back, and retailers are betting they'll be big this holiday season.

    By Martha C. White

    Nostalgia sells. 

    At least that's what toy manufacturers and retailers are hoping this holiday season. Former Generation Y hit toys like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers and Furby are surging in popularity this year, contrary to the assumption that all kids care about today are toys with screens.

    On Monday, the Toy Industry Association released its nominees for its 2013 Toy of the Year Awards. In the running for “e-connected toy of the year” is Hasbro’s Furby, a robotic critter that first debuted nine years before the iPhone was invented. This year’s iteration has an iOS app.

    toysrus.com

    Hasbro's Furby, a robotic critter that first debuted nine years before the iPhone was invented, is on top toy lists this holiday season.

    Furby also landed on both the girls’ and boys’ lists in the National Retail Federation’s 2012 Top Toys survey at number three and number nine, respectively.

    Slideshow: Hot holiday toys for 2012

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles make multiple appearances on the Toy Industry Association’s list, nominated in the categories of top toy for boys and most successful brand growth for the year.

    Experts say there are a few reasons why these blasts from the past are suddenly hot again.

    Retro toys “tend to be more popular in times of economic difficulty,” said Gerrick Johnson, equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “On both the supply and demand side, they’re safe,” he said. “You know it worked for one generation of kids.”

    Parents with tight holiday shopping budgets might gravitate toward toys they remember enjoying a generation earlier. ”This year’s top toys... have some staying power, meaning children won’t get bored with them within a few weeks,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement.

    Toys typically resurface in 20- to 25-year cycles, Johnson said. Companies calculate that adults who see familiar characters or games on store shelves will be in the right age range to have kids that can discover them for the first time.

    “There’s no doubt that shelf recognition helps,” said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis for the NPD Group. “It’s equally a familiarity factor."

    And although parents remember them, old-school toys are new and exciting for today’s kids, said Toy Industry Association trend specialist Adrienne Appell. “Sometimes the nostalgia and the back-to-basics factor is a 'wow' factor for the kids because they’re so used to the technology,” she said. “It’s what parents are comfortable with.”

    They’re also cheaper to produce. “A lot of these toy companies that bring back retro toys, it’ll be less expensive for them to do so,” Johnson said, because the R&D investment has already been made.

    Although brands are counting on the nostalgia of Gen Y parents to fuel demand, they’re not relying on it entirely. Earlier this year, Nickelodeon released a new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" television series. The Power Ranger franchise is reintroducing many of its classic characters in a new season on Nickelodeon timed to coincide with its 20th anniversary early next year. In a release last month, owner Saban Brands said the launch would be supported by “a robust global consumer products campaign, character appearances, retail promotions and advertising.”

    Classic toys are filling a vacuum in the market. Thanks to the economy, there just aren’t as many potential new breakout hits this year. "Innovation has been somewhat lacking," Johnson said.

    Toys take a long time to go from an inventor’s sketchbook to store shelves. Development, manufacturing and shipping from China — where most toys are produced — adds up to an 18- to 24-month lead time. To be in people’s shopping carts now, a toy would have had to be green-lighted as early as late 2010. Back then, the NRF predicted a meager 2.3 percent increase in holiday sales over 2009, so companies shied away from big investments that might not pay off.

    What’s more, manufacturers and retailers have to forecast months in advance which toys will be hot for the upcoming holiday season. Even though economic indicators are inching up, they’re unwilling to risk getting it wrong and having to slash prices when the new year rolls around.

    “There’s less risk in terms of returns or not utilizing shelf space well” by sticking with proven franchises, Crupnick said.

    By 2014, Johnson said new toys will probably be popping up on store shelves as toy companies regain confidence in the market and start investing in the search for the next big hit. But there’s probably still one more holiday season of retro toys ahead of us.

    “We’re seeing this trend likely to continue and intensify in the coming year,” Appell said. Parents who hung onto boxes of childhood memorabilia might very well have next year’s most sought-after toy buried at the bottom.

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