St. Patrick’s Day kicks off Spring Season with Americans spending $4.6 Billion on Holiday Festivities and Attire.

According to NRF’s St. Patrick’s Day Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics, nearly 127 million Americans are planning to celebrate the traditional Irish holiday and will spend an average of $36.52 on green garb, festive food and more, compared to $35.78 last year. Total spending for the holiday, which fell on Tuesday, March 17, is expected to reach around $4.6 billion.

“Consumers are ready to shed their winter blues and welcome spring’s arrival with St. Patrick’s Day celebrations,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “Falling at the perfect time of year – just as temperatures begin to rise – retailers are hoping St. Patrick’s Day will also draw the attention of those looking for traditional spring merchandise as consumers take the opportunity to stock up for warm months ahead with home improvement, garden and apparel purchases.”

The survey found that more than 104 million Americans, or eight in 10 (82.4%) of those celebrating, plan to wear green to make sure the luck of the Irish is with them this year; 28.9 million, or 22.8% of celebrants, plan to decorate their homes with shamrocks, leprechauns and pots of "gold."

It could be suggested that St. Patrick’s Day has now become the unofficial Kick Off for the spring spending season. The NRF-Prosper Insights and Analytics survey can be read here.

To have your goods ready and to meet the EDI requirements of your customers in time for next year’s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, please call B2BGateway on 401-491-9595, email Sales@B2BGateway.Net or visit www.B2BGateway.Net 

 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Stay Calm - Don't PANIC!

The term "Black Friday" may have originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red (i.e., posting a loss on the books) to being in the black, (i.e., turning a profit) yeah!

 
Cyber Monday, on the other hand, is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday; the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The term made its debut in 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year".  Here are a few fun and not so fun facts.

According to The National Retail Federation, shoppers spent $11.4 billion on Black Friday in 2011, and total spending over the four-day weekend following Thanksgiving reached a record $52.4 billion, which was up 16% from $45 billion the year before.  A record 226 million consumers shopped in stores and online between Thursday and Sunday, up from 212 million in 2010.  Individual shoppers spent more too, the NRF said, with the average holiday shopper shelling out $398.62 this weekend alone, which was up from $365.34 in 2010.  (Sources: moneycnn.com, shine.yahoo.com)

As most who have ever ventured out to participate in this annual ritual are likely aware, crowds abound, and people can get a bit carried away at times.  One 2011 Black Friday incident included a woman who injured 20 people at a Walmart in California while clearing her way to an X-Box display using pepper spray.  However, there are happy stories as well.  According to the New York Daily News, two individuals have Black Friday to thank for their unique love-at-first-sight story. The two lovebirds struck up conversation while standing in line at a Long Island Kmart. The small talk turned into sweet talk as the two waited in line together for a total of seven hours before doors opened. Fast forward a few years, and the couple is happily married with fond memories of the day they met.

Pretty crazy stuff. For us, at B2BGateway.Net, it’s a little less hectic, a lot more controlled. We see an enormous amount of EDI traffic on both days but we’re way more relaxed than the shoppers out there losing their minds and pepper spraying babies for video games. See, we prepare well in advance of the ensuing madness by adding and deploying virtualized servers for increased process handling. We’re seriously ready for anything. So, shop all you want and we’ll monitor the action far away from the choas. If by chance you’d like to learn a little more about our robust technical architecture, check us out. http://www.b2bgateway.net/technical_architecture.asp

Happy Holidays,

-Brian Alty

B2BGateway to attend NRF's Retail's BIG Show

B2BGatewaywill be attending the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 101st Annual Convention and EXPO which takes place in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York form January 15th-18th, 2012.

The National Retail Federations’ Annual Convention & EXPO was nicknamed ‘Retail's BIG Show’ many years ago and because the name was so appropriate, it stuck. Today, ‘Retail's BIG Show’ is NRF's flagship industry event and is held annually in New York City. The four day event offers unparalleled education, collegial networking, and an enormous EXPO Hall full of technologies and solutions. Over 22,000 attendees from 82 countries and 500 exhibitors attended last year’s event.

B2BGateway has been providing cloud based fully integrated EDI and supply chain solutions to suppliers of large retailers such as Walmart, Target, Michael’s, Amazon, Buy.com, etc., since 1999. B2BGateway is a GS1 Accredited EDI Solution Provider offering supply chain solutions such as Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Supplier Portals and Warehouse Support Sites (WSS) with ASN and GS1-128 capabilities. B2BGateway also offers outsourced trading partner Testing & Validation solutions to large retailers, manufacturers and distributors who wish to cut down on costs and free up resources in their IT departments.

If you plan on attending the NRF ‘Retail’s BIG Show’ in New York, make sure to look out for the B2BGateway.Net team and say hello!