Amazon Dominates Holiday Shopping Again – Are Consumers Spending Money They Don’t Have? – MGR Unplugged Podcast

Thanksgiving – Cyber Monday eComm Numbers

Amazon Tops Sales: No surprise here.  And Amazon Resellers sold $5 billion between Black Friday and Cyber Monday on Amazon — a 60% increase from last year.
Top-selling items this year include Barack Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land,” the redesigned Echo Dot and the Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer Hot Air Brush.

Black Friday this year climbed 22% year over year to a record $9 billion, according to Adobe Analytics. Cyber Monday, the busiest online shopping day of the year, is also expected to notch record sales.

Meanwhile, Shopify (SHOP), a sales platform primarily used by small businesses, measured $5.1 billion in global sales over the four days between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making it the largest weekend ever in its history.

That’s a sharp contrast to foot traffic at brick-and-mortar stores, which fell 52% on Black Friday compared to last year, according to a report from Sensormatic Solutions. Shopping traffic on Thanksgiving dropped by 95%, as many stores closed

More Shopify 2020 Black Friday/Cyber Monday Global Highlights

• 44+ million consumers globally purchased from independent and direct-to-consumer brands powered by Shopify, a 50% jump from 2019.
• Black Friday/Cyber Monday Weekend sales peaked at 12:00 PM ET on Black Friday, with $102 million+ sales that hour.
• Consumers spent $89.20 USD on average per order throughout the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. Consumers in Japan ($106.40 USD) and Australia ($105.50 USD) spent the most on average, ahead of shoppers in Canada ($103.00 USD), US ($92.80 USD), and others.
• The top-selling cities over the shopping weekend were New York, Los Angeles, and London while the US, UK and Canada were amongst the top-selling countries worldwide.
• Japan (347%), Italy (211%), Germany (189%), and UK (122%) saw triple-digit growth of sales on the platform since last year.
• Mobile sales stayed relatively flat this Black Friday/Cyber Monday compared to last year, with 67% of sales made on mobile devices versus 33% on desktop, compared to 68% of sales made on mobile devices versus 32% on desktop in 2019.
• Apparel and accessories held the top spot for sales across Shopify-powered stores this weekend, with health and beauty, and home and garden following.

We also discuss the Government’s money policy and how it is creating a dead spiral that will lead to huge inflation numbers down the road.  The money printing machine continues and the dollar will continue to devaluate making inflation the highest hidden tax burden that all consumers will feel in their wallets.

All of this while Bitcoin is hitting new records every week and gold seems to take a step back.  Time will tell if investors are putting their money in the right place.