The day after Thanksgiving, shoppers spent $7.4 billion online, a nearly 20% increase compared to their Black Friday spending in 2018, according to Adobe Analytics.  (They spent an additional $4 billion on Thanksgiving day itself, according to Reuters.)

Even so, according to Adobe, it was Cyber Monday that emerged as the real winner for one-day sales, with online shoppers ringing up $9.4 billion in purchases, an almost 20% increase compared to 2018 when shoppers spent $7.9 billion.

Shopping by phone takes off

Thirty-six percent of online purchases between November 1 and December 1, 2019, were made using smartphones, a 24.1% increase from last year, according to Adobe. Meanwhile, 59% of purchases were made from desktops and 5% were made from tablets.

On Black Friday this year, L.O.L. Surprise Dolls, which cost between $13 and $100 were the top-selling product, followed by Frozen 2 toys, according to Adobe. Video games FIFA 20 and Madden 20, and the game console Nintendo Switch, which retails for $300, were also top sellers, along with interactive game Just Dance 2020, Samsung TVs, Instapots, Apple laptops, and Fire TVs.

Amazon vs. Target and Walmart

Although Amazon is the largest online retailer in the U.S., its competitors Target and Walmart reportedly had stronger Cyber Monday sales growth this year.

Target’s online sales jumped 51%, while Walmart’s increased by 47%, compared to sales growth of 32% for Amazon on Cyber Monday, according to CNBC.

Target and Walmart have started expanding their e-commerce businesses to compete with Amazon, which offers free and often same-day delivery to its Amazon Prime customers. Target started offering same-day delivery to most states in June 2019.

More about the retail industry

While online sales may be surging, foot traffic on Black Friday to so-called brick and mortar stores fell by 6.2%, according to reports.

In fact, the traditional retail industry has experienced significant problems in recent years, with several physical stores filing for bankruptcy or closing locations including J.C. Penney, RadioShack, Payless ShoeSource, and The Limited.

What’s more, since 2017, the retail industry has lost 140,000 jobs, according to recent reports.

The retail industry is also one of the largest segments of the economy, generating nearly $5 trillion in sales in the first ten months of 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s roughly one-quarter of the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which is the total of all goods and services the economy produces.

Retail is also a big employer. About 16 million people work for U.S. retailers, or one in nine people, according to recent reports. Nearly 5 million people work as retail salespeople, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Together, they ring up nearly half-a-trillion dollars worth of sales—that’s more revenue each year than the next top five retailers combined, according to the National Retail Federation.

But one is the king of eCommerce, specializing in crunching consumer data and delivery logistics, while the other is a behemoth in the old world of bricks and mortar transactions, at home with shopping carts and Black Friday super deals.

Yet increasingly, Amazon and Walmart are going neck in neck for customers, each competing for the territory of the other. While Amazon has attempted to cross over into physical world sales, Walmart has invested heavily in its online presence.

Who will win the war for your wallet? We take a deeper look at both businesses, and you decide.

Amazon vs Walmart

Founders:

Amazon: Jeff Bezos
Walmart: Sam Walton

Year founded:

Amazon: 1994
Walmart: 1962

Market Cap:

Amazon:  $900 billion
Walmart: $290 billion

Revenues:

Amazon: $178 billion
Walmart: $500 billion annually, as of fiscal year 2018

Number of employees:

Amazon: 566,000
Walmart: 1.5 million

Who owns what?

In addition to consumer-facing businesses such as Zappos, Twitch, and Whole Foods, Amazon owns a suite of tech businesses including cloud services company Amazon Web Services, membership services division Prime, and consumer electronics such as Alexa and Echo products, Kindle, and Fire.

Amazon also owns other e-commerce companies, including Souq.com, which specializes in retail sales in the Middle East.

Walmart owns numerous other retailers both in the US and around the globe, such as men’s fashion wear company Bonobos, online retailer Jet.com, and the membership-only wholesale warehouse chain Sam’s Club. It also owns e-Commerce company Flipkart, of India.

It also has a toe into the world of streaming media. The company announced plans to get into the binge-watching subscription television space with Vudu, in order to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.

Amazon’s strengths

Amazon practically invented e-Commerce, and today controls nearly half of all online sales.

Two-thirds of all consumers in the U.S. have bought from Amazon and nearly one-third purchase from it at least once a month, according to reports. With the recent acquisition of the high-end grocery chain Whole Foods, Amazon has also planted a stake in the ground for physical world sales.

More than a million small businesses today also sell on the Amazon marketplace.

Amazon’s weaknesses

Other online retailers are gunning for its territory.

In 2016, Walmart purchased the online retailer Jet.com, in what analysts said was an attempt to compete directly with Amazon. Overseas, it also faces big competition from companies including e-commerce company Alibaba—which sells to 500 million consumers in China alone.

Walmart’s strengths

By sales volume, Walmart is the largest retailer in the nation, and nearly every American has shopped at Walmart, according to industry data. It specializes in the race to the bottom prices, by squeezing suppliers to offer the lowest cost merchandise they can possibly produce.

Walmart weaknesses

Every year, more consumers shop online, and Walmart has had to play catch up with its digital sales strategy. Its purchase of Jet.com for $3 billion in 2016, according to experts, demonstrated its intention not to be caught napping.

Meanwhile, Walmart estimates digital sales for the company will increase by 40% in 2018. Smaller superstores such as Costco and Target are nipping at its heels.

Want a piece of retail giants?  You can invest in stocks and funds that focus on the business of retail on Stash.

The post Amazon vs. Walmart: Inside the Battle to Sell You Everything appeared first on Stash Learn.

Sears has found it hard to compete in the era of online sales, dominated by Amazon, and in the era of big-box stores, ruled over by Walmart, Target, Home Depot and others, according to industry experts.

The 130-year-old chain is also drowning in debt and needs to repay $134 million in loans early this week, according to reports.

But Sears has been in decline for years. Just ten years ago, the company had 300,000 employees. Today, plagued by falling sales, it has fewer than 70,000 workers, according to reports.

Here are the details:

• The chain will close 186 unprofitable stores, according to its press release.
• Sears’ chief executive officer Eddie Lampert will step down and will be replaced by three other top executives at the company.
• Lampert owns a hedge fund called ESL, which has loaned Sears close to $1 billion.
• Sears also owns Kmart; many of its stores are also set to close.
• Sears has secured at least $600 million in post-bankruptcy financing to help reorganize the company, according to its press release.
• The company’s last profitable year was 2010, and it has reportedly lost $12 billion since then and closed 2,800 stores since 2005.

What is bankruptcy?

Businesses file for bankruptcy to protect themselves from creditors, which are entities or people that have loaned them money. They typically go through a court-mediated process, called Chapter 11, that allows them to reorganize and round up financing to continue operations, as well as discharge some of their debts.

In contrast, consumers can file for something called Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, which are also court-mediate processes that allow them to get rid of debts. With Chapter 13, debts are not liquidated completely, and a repayment plan for some of the debt is drafted.

The story of Sears

Sears was founded in 1893, as Sears, Roebuck &  Co. It started out as a catalog company selling watches and jewelry and opened its first department stores in the 1920s. Its catalog ultimately expanded to include hundreds of pages, selling everything from clothing to kit houses delivered by railroad.

In its heyday, it dominated the 20th-century retail landscape, even launching brands like Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances. It shipped to nearly every U.S. home, was the first department store to create parking lots outside its stores to accommodate customers, and to stay open seven days a week, according to reports.

Interesting fact: It also launched Allstate Insurance and the Discover credit card.

Tough times for retail

Sears’ bankruptcy comes at a time when other high-profile retail stores are also going out of business.

These include Toys R Us, which closed down in March, and RadioShack, Payless Shoe Source, and The Limited.

The post Sears is Filing for Bankruptcy: What’s Bankruptcy, Anyway? appeared first on Stash Learn.

Traditional retailers and online stores racked up record sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as shoppers turned out in droves to snag deals on items including laptops, toys, mobile devices and gaming consoles. Stores they visited included Best Buy, Macy’s, Target, and Toys ‘R’ Us.

Online retail king Amazon beat all other competitors for online sales over the weekend.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday, respectively the Friday and Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday, are two of the most important shopping days of the year for retailers.

The strong sales are a welcome relief and promise a good start to the holiday buying season for so-called bricks and mortar stores that operate in physical locations. Such stores have struggled to attract shoppers in recent years.

Here are some numbers:

Sales on Cyber Monday, a day devoted to online bargains, hit a record $6.59 billion. That’s an increase of nearly 17% compared to 2016, according to reports.

Online retailers bagged nearly $8 billion on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, up nearly 18% compared to 2016, according to Reuters.

The strong turnout is good news for the traditional retail sector, which has experienced a steep decline in sales in recent years.

Foot traffic to bricks and mortar stores decreased less than 1% on Black Friday, compared to 2016, according to industry reports. Consumers still spent a record $5 billion that day, with 54% of online shopping visits coming from mobile devices.

Good news for the slumping brick and mortar retail sector?

The strong turnout is good news for the traditional retail sector, which has experienced a steep decline in sales in recent years.

Chain stores including RadioShack, Payless Shoe Source, and The Limited have filed for bankruptcy in recent years. Once big name retailers such as Sears and J.C. Penney have also closed locations. And In the first four months of 2017, the retail sector lost 72,000 jobs, according to a recent report by Bloomberg Businessweek.

The retail industry is also one of the largest segments of the economy, generating nearly $5 trillion in sales in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Retail is also a big employer. About 16 million people work for U.S. retailers, or one in nine people, according to recent reports. More than 8 million people work as retail salespeople and cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The post Retailers Rejoice! Black Friday and Cyber Monday Racked Up Record Sales appeared first on Stash Learn.

Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, reported strong financial results for its second quarter on Thursday. The world’s largest retailer, which has annual revenue of nearly $500 billion, is benefitting from pouring cash into increasing in-store customer experiences, and amping up its online presence, financial analysts say.

Here are some highlights from Walmart’s second quarter earnings report:

• Revenue, or customer sales, increased 2.1% to $124 billion.
• Its comparable store sales increased 1.8%. This metric, sometimes referred to as same-store sales, compares the second quarter sales for Walmart stores that have been open for at least one year, to their sales in the same quarter a year earlier. Retailers use same-store sales data to get a clear picture of store performance. This is Walmart’s 12th consecutive quarter of same-store sales increases, according to the retailer.
• Walmart’s same-store traffic also ticked up 1.3%.
• The company’s operating expenses, or amount of cash it spent in the quarter, levered up about 4% as it increased expenditures on its ecommerce offering.

Walmart is increasingly going head to head with ecommerce king Amazon, which dominates sales in the online world. Walmart has made significant investments in its own ecommerce offerings in recent years, including through its 2016 purchase of Jet.com for $3 billion, which helped it increase its distribution network for online sales, analysts say.

Both Walmart and Amazon are also competing over grocery sales. Amazon’s recent purchase of Whole Foods signalled its intent to become a serious player in that sector, experts say. Similarly, Walmart gets more than half of its revenue from food sales, which also contributed to strong growth in the quarter, the company said in its earnings report.

Key takeaways: While the retail segment has been in a slump for the past year or more, there are bright spots. Walmart is one of them. The company posted strong earnings for its most recent quarter, thanks to online and grocery sales.

You may also want to read: What to Make of All the Layoffs in the Retail Industry

The post Bucking the Retail Slump: Walmart Powers Ahead appeared first on Stash Learn.

But the retail sector has been in a slump in recent years.

What is the retail industry?

The retail industry is filled with big name brands you probably use almost on a daily basis. We’re talking about companies like Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Target, and Walmart, to name just a few.

These companies are often called bricks and mortar stores, because unlike online competitors like Amazon, they operate from physical stores where consumers come in to shop around and make their purchases.

But many of these stores are experiencing difficulties, because the way people are spending money is reportedly changing.

Retail sector: The challenges

Scores of retail stores have filed for bankruptcy or closed their doors in the past year, including RadioShack, Payless Shoe Source, and The Limited. And in the first four months of the year, the sector lost 72,000 jobs, according to a recent report by Bloomberg Businessweek.

That’s potentially a big problem because retail is also one of the largest segments of the economy, generating nearly $5 trillion in sales in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s roughly one third of the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which is the total of all goods and services the economy produces.

Retail is also a big employer.

About 16 million people work for U.S. retailers, or one in nine people, according to recent reports. More than 8 million people work as retail salespeople and cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about five percent of the entire U.S. labor force.

So what’s going on?

• Increasing numbers of shoppers prefer to make their purchases online. E-commerce shopping is expected to grow by more than 40% to about $500 billion by 2020, according to research firm Forrester. Of course, Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla in online shopping, and in recent years it’s made big inroads in shopping, with easy return policies and services like Prime, which promise to get users deliveries within two days.
• But even some of the traditional retailers are launching their own e-commerce divisions, which can cut down on sales at bricks and mortar stores. And it turns out they are automating jobs that used to be done by people.
• There’s an oversupply of malls. And when big anchor tenants–the Macy’s and Sears of the world–don’t do well and decide to leave, there’s a spillover effect, reducing traffic to other retail stores.
• People appear to be spending their money in different ways–like going out more for dinner more, for vacations, and on the ever-increasing cost of health care, according to a recent report in The Economist.

Is there any good news for the retail sector?

It’s not all gloom and doom however. While e-commerce is certainly a growth opportunity for jobs, U.S. consumers still prefer to shop in stores for most products, according to this report.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts the number of traditional retail sales jobs to continue growing by 5% through 2024.

Key takeaways:

Consumer spending fuels the U.S. economy, and the retail sector is one of the biggest employers in the U.S. In recent years, the traditional retail industry has suffered from weaker sales and layoffs as e-commerce sales have continued to gain ground. Still, U.S. consumers still prefer to shop in stores for most items.

The post What to Make of All the Layoffs in the Retail Industry appeared first on Stash Learn.

But the retail sector has been in a slump in recent years, and that’s potentially a cause for concern for the many people who work in the industry, including many who invest on Stash.

What is the retail industry?

The retail industry is filled with big name brands you probably use almost on a daily basis. We’re talking about companies like Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, Target, and Walmart, to name just a few.

These companies are often called bricks and mortar stores, because unlike online competitors like Amazon, they operate from physical stores where consumers come in to shop around and make their purchases.

But many of these stores are experiencing difficulties, because the way people are spending money is reportedly changing.

Retail sector: The challenges

In fact, scores of retail stores have filed for bankruptcy or closed their doors in the past year, including RadioShack, Payless Shoe Source, and The Limited. And In the first four months of the year, the sector lost 72,000 jobs, according to a recent report by Bloomberg Businessweek.

That’s potentially a big problem because retail is also one of the largest segments of the economy, generating nearly $5 trillion in sales in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s roughly one third of the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which is the total of all goods and services the economy produces.

Retail is also a big employer. About 16 million people work for U.S. retailers, or one in nine people, according to recent reports. More than 8 million people work as retail salespeople and cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about five percent of the entire U.S. labor force.

And a slump in retail is likely to hit home for those of you who invest with Stash. Of those who have reported the industry in which they work, roughly 40% say they’re employed by the biggest U.S. retailers.

So what’s going on?

• Increasing numbers of shoppers prefer to make their purchases online. Ecommerce shopping is expected to grow by more than 40% to about $500 billion by 2020, according to research firm Forrester. Of course, Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla in online shopping, and in recent years it’s made big inroads in shopping, with easy return policies and services like Prime, which promise to get users deliveries within two days.
• But even some of the traditional retailers are launching their own eCommerce divisions, which can cut down on sales at bricks and mortar stores. And it turns out they are automating jobs that used to be done by people.
• There’s an oversupply of malls. And when big anchor tenants–the Macy’s and Sears of the world–don’t do well and decide to leave, there’s a spillover effect, reducing traffic to other retail stores.
• People appear to be spending their money in different ways–like going out more for dinner more, for vacations, and on the ever-increasing cost of health care, according to a recent report in The Economist.

Is there any good news for the retail sector?

It’s not all gloom and doom however. While ECommerce is certainly a growth opportunity for jobs, U.S. consumers still prefer to shop in stores for most products, according to this report.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts the number of traditional retail sales jobs to continue growing by 5% through 2024.

Here are a few more details about Stash investors who work in the retail sector:

• The majority earn less than $25,000 annually.
• The top three funds they’ve invested in are the Moderate Mix and Blue Chips and Conservative Mix funds.
• By contrast, the top funds for the average Stash investor are Delicious Dividends, Blue Chips, and Moderate Mix funds.  

Key Takeaways:

Consumer spending fuels the U.S. economy, and the retail sector is one of the biggest employers in the U.S. In recent years, the traditional retail industry has suffered from weaker sales and layoffs as Ecommerce sales have continued to gain ground. U.S. consumers still prefer to shop in stores for most items.

The post What’s Causing the Retail Slump? appeared first on Stash Learn.