Is online the place to be during the busy holiday shopping season? For eBags.com, being an online destination has been a great vehicle for customer engagement and customer experience.
Peter Cobb, Co-founder/EVP Marketing, eBags.com told Loyalty360 that his company experienced an eye-opening Thanksgiving weekend from a sales perspective.
Here are some highlights:
eBags achieved its highest Saturday sales in the company’s 17-year history (an increase of 63% year-over-year)
Margins rose 62%, indicating sales growth was not the result of heavy promotions
eBags branded product sales jumped 112% (year-over-year), holding the No. 1 position (out of 550 brands)
Saturday mobile sales rose 97% (year-over-year); tablet sales increased 16% (year-over-year)
Conversation increased 25% from last year; traffic up only 5% (“indicating shoppers ready to purchase for the right deals,” Cobb said.
Partner sales via Amazon, eBay, Jet.com grew 181% (year-over-year)
Each of the three days over the Thanksgiving weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun) have been all-time company day sales and gross profit records
On track for a fourth straight record on Cyber Monday
Mobile sales for the three days rose 68% (year-over-year), “demonstrating customers’ comparison shopping with smartphones,” Cobb noted.
eBags private label brand recorded the strongest growth (up 85% YOY)
Partner sales (Amazon.com, eBay, Jet.com, Walmart.com) grew 102%, led by Amazon.com up 101% YOY, Walmart.com 43% YOY
Amazon FBA sales up 281%, indicating strong Prime sales
So what sparked this record-setting performance for eBags over the Thanksgiving weekend?
“It is more about product assortment than any recent site features,” Cobb explained. “We recently built out a team that is solely focused on negotiating killer deals with our 550 brands. So, where in the past we might have had 50 “Doorbusters”, this season we had over 1,000 Black Friday Deals, many of them exclusive to eBags.com. Also, as you see from the mobile sales, that indicates that people are shopping around a bit and realizing the eBags deal is superior.”
Cobb said that the eBags private label brand continues to resonate with customers.
“It’s easily our top-selling brand out of 550,” Cobb noted. “The founders of eBags were product executives at Samsonite and we have built a brand of travel products that has gone viral. It’s amazing for the eBags brand to be up 112% on a huge base (and with favorable margins). Again, exclusively through eBags. Finally, we have spent quite a bit of time on making our pages super-fast to load, which helps drive the conversion percentage, especially for mobile. We’re off to a strong start to Holiday ’15. Fun days to be a retailer−at least online. “