Target had strong sales over the holiday weekend, and wrapped up with a record-breaking Cyber Monday.
While many U.S. retailers experienced ho-hum sales leading into the 2015 holiday season, Target was ho-ho-ho-ing all the way to the bank.
It wasn’t enough that Target set new records with in-store sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. When Cyber Monday rolled around, it shot way past those records to set even higher ones.
The pace was such that the Target website buckled under the pressure. It didn’t actually crash, Target spokeswoman Jenna Reck said. The retailer just “slowed it down” in order to try to manage as many people as possible. Reck told CNBC that volume was “twice as high as our busiest day ever.” And crash or slowdown, she acknowledged it caused problems for some online shoppers.
For Thanksgiving and Black Friday, overall sales at stores totaled about $12.1 billion, according to analytics firm ShopperTrak. This was a decline of about 1.5% on flat customer traffic, another firm, RetailNext, found.
Target’s performance was the outcome of a retailing strategy that reflects the declining role of Black Friday as the “official” start of the holiday shopping season. Increasingly, discounting starts earlier and often and people are as inclined to experience family togetherness at the mall as they are over turkey.
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Target kicked off the season well before Thanksgiving, with “10 Days of Deals” starting Sunday, Nov. 22. Among the daily offers were 10% off electronics and 20% off kitchenware, and the deals continued with a Black Friday pre-sale and into Cyber Monday, when the 15% off sale for everything on the site caused a near-meltdown.
Jason Goldberger, president of Target.com and its mobile organization, said the retailer expected high levels of traffic on Cyber Monday – just not as much as they actually experienced.
He said: “Early in the day, Target.com orders were coming in twice as fast as our busiest day ever. By early in the night, we had already surpassed the previous record for online sales—making Cyber Monday our biggest online sales day ever.”
Racking up sales records? The top selling item was the Xbox One 500GB Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Bundle. Close behind was the 48” Samsung 4K Ultra HD televisions – with two being sold every minute.
Other top sellers included the Apple iPad Air 2, Barbie Dream House, Graco 4Ever All-in-One Car Seat, the Nest Learning Thermostat and Pampers Baby Dry Diaper Super-Size Pack.
