In the days before online shopping, catalogs were a common way to purchase holiday gifts without having to go to a store as customers placed and received their orders directly through the mail. Sears issued the first holiday edition of its popular catalog in 1933 selling toys like a Mickey Mouse watch, a Lionel electric train set, and live singing canaries. In 1968, the catalog grew to more than 600 pages, including 225 pages of toys. Many companies relied on Continue reading
Retailers once considered July to be a slow month as regular customers spent their money on travel and other activities rather than shopping at local stores. Then Amazon created Prime Day, a 48-hour sales event that turned the middle of July into a bonanza of consumer cash for the e-commerce giant. This past Prime Day was Amazon’s biggest yet, with the company racking up $14.2 billion in sales over the course of two days last week, an 11 percent increase Continue reading
When Amazon launched the Echo in 2014, both the e-commerce giant and media observers set the bar very high for the smart speaker. One publication likened the voice-assisted machine to something out of Star Trek while others called it the “computer of the future” that would soon be in every home. These predictions seemed reasonable enough as Amazon sold more than 5 million Echos in the device’s first two years on the market. By 2016, the Echo and its voice Continue reading
Earlier this week, we posted a video about a seemingly unremarkable highway corridor in Arizona that turned into a haven for enormous warehouses. Logistics hubs like these are becoming increasingly common around the U.S., from Southern California’s warehouse epicenter in the Inland Empire to multi-million square-foot facilities in Ohio and New York. Satellite images collected over the last 20 years show how warehouses have transformed acres of wide-open space into concentrated networks of huge buildings swarming with workers. In fact, Continue reading
The e-commerce giant Amazon is the second largest private employer in the U.S., with more than 1 million employees working in fulfillment centers and corporate offices around the country. For years, labor activists have sought to unionize this enormous workforce, but past efforts largely failed to gain traction. That may be starting to change, however, if recent developments at New York’s largest Amazon warehouse are any indication.
Last week, staff at the JFK8 facility on Staten Island voted 2,654 Continue reading
In years past, the day after Thanksgiving marked a singular bonanza of sales as retailers held literal “door-buster” events that attracted crowds of determined customers desperate for deals. The rise of e-commerce gradually changed the holiday sales game, however, with companies now largely opting to spread sales throughout the season rather than concentrating on one day or weekend. As a result, this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales slowed down for the first time in history while overall retail Continue reading
With thousands of stores closed around the country, U.S. retailers saw sales plunge by 8.7 percent in March. That represents the worst monthly decline on record as millions of consumers stopped visiting restaurants, bars, and shopping malls due to stay-at-home orders for coronavirus containment. While sales of cars, furniture, and electronics all experienced double digit drops, spending at clothing stores plummeted by more than 50 percent. Manufacturing capacity and oil production also fell to their lowest rates since the end Continue reading