This week in eCommerce, following their wins at the 67th Emmy Awards Amazon is running a limited time one day sale on Prime memberships. On September 25th consumers will be able to purchase a membership for the subscription service for only $67! Fashion companies are in a race to the top of the eCommerce retail-chain. Mergers and acquisitions within luxury retail have been heating up, and most recently Yoox purchased Net-a-Porter in probably the most excellent merger we’ve seen between two digital companies; forming a powerhouse of fashion and commerce online to form the biggest fashion e-tailer in the world with combined annual sales of €1.3 billion. Neiman Marcus’s huge online growth can be attributed to their focus on the personalization of the buying experience for customers. This strategy has paid its dividends for the luxury fashion retailer, with web sales accounting for 25% of their revenue. eCommerce is the fastest growing food channel! Executives at General Mills are making significant investments in eCommerce, looking to grow online sales from 1-2% to 5-6% in the next several of year. Online grocery sales are outpacing the growth of bricks and mortar retail and represent a huge opportunity for these titans of manufacturing. For all the details from this week’s newsmakers, continue reading our Weekly eCommerce Wrap-Up below:
Primetime Prime Subscriptions for Amazon
Amazon Prime Memberships Drop To $67 On Friday Only
Source: TechCrunch
Amazon is always quick to boost its Prime service’s subscription numbers, and this time around the eCommerce giant is playing off of their Emmy wins at the 67th Emmy Awards. To celebrate the wins of their original series “Transparent” at the television award show, Amazon is dropping the price of Prime on September 25th to $67. Get it? 67th Emmys, $67. This limited time offer will only last 24 hours says the company. Not only is Amazon able to leverage this opportunity for Prime sales, the company is also promoting Amazon Prime Instant Video, which all ties in nicely with the shows they’ve been producing that not many have heard about. Amazon Prime Instant Video is a competitor of Netflix, and offers customers a growing selection of video content including Amazon original programming like “Hand of God”, “Bosch”, “Catastrophe”, and more! Click here to view this offer.
It’s a Race Down the eCommerce Catwalk for Fashion Companies
Who’s Winning the Fashion E-Commerce Race?
Source: Business of Fashion
The recent merger of Yoox and Net-a-Porter represents a picture perfect union of front end and back end. Yoox, the Italian internet mail order retailer of multibrand clothing, is buying the eCommerce go-to site for fashionistas Net-a-Porter from Richemont. This deal forms the world’s biggest fashion e-tailers! Yoox is a leader in backend operations, and even powers several brands including Armani and Valentino. Net-a-Porter is a beautiful example of front-end, with its magazine-like digital representation of products and editorial content. Despite the challenges that merging these two companies represent, Yoox is a known company of engineers while Net-a-Porter is strictly marketers, these two businesses can piggyback on each other to dominate the luxury digital retail space. This deal comes at a time when the race among fashion companies is heating up with new digital business models. This year Neiman Marcus acquired fashion e-tailer MyTheresa; Farfetch acquired Browns; Conde Nast is relaunching Style.com, amongst the many more mergers and acquisitions. Click here to learn more about the fashion companies racing to win eCommerce, and the digital strategies behind their moves.
Personalization the Key to Neiman Marcus’s Online Sales Win
Online sales account for over 25% of Neiman Marcus’s revenue
Source: Internet Retailer
Neiman Marcus is in the midst of preparing to go public and is placing a a great amount of weight in its online growth. In fiscal 2015 the retailers sold $1.3 billion online in Q3 2015. This represents an increase of 13% year-over-year. For Neiman Marcus’s total sales in 2015 ($5.095 billion), web sales accounted for 25.5% of that total up from 23.9% the previous year. Neiman Marcus filed for an IPO at the beginning of August, so the company is remaining fairly quiet about their growth. Executives have indicated that their investments in technology have been the key to their growth with a focus placed on personalization. The retailer customized the experience of how customers interact with brands, with editorial homepages and personalized site searches based on past browsing behaviour.
The Fastest-Growing Food Channel
General Mills investing in e-commerce efforts
Source: Food Business News
General Mills is calling eCommerce the fastest growing good channel, and making investments in digital to back-up their confidence in online. Currently, General Mills’s online sales are only about 1-2%, but the company is hoping that their focus on eCommerce will boost this to 5-6% in the next few years. The outlook is positive, as the U.K. and France are already seeing nearly 10% of sales occurring online in some categories. The General Mills product portfolio is well-suited for the online shopper. Items like Larabar, which General Mills refers to as a “Spear fished” product (single item search), do well on websites catering to consumers looking to do a full basket shop online. Walmart and Amazon have already started making their investments in bringing food and beverage online, and it’s due time that CPG companies follow. Online grocery sales are growing rapidly, much more so than brick and mortar retail. We reported last week on Gibu Thomas’s move from WalMart to PepsiCo, it seems like General Mills is taking it’s eCommerce opportunity seriously at just the right time.
The post This Week in eCommerce: September 21 – 25 appeared first on Demac Media.
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