The good news about online retailing is that sales rose a hefty 70 percent in the recent holiday season. The bad news is that returned purchases also soared and may easily approach $1.5 billion.
That’s the tally of the Yankee Group, the technology consulting firm that has been surveying online retailers about return levels during the past few weeks.
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Some reasons for the surge in returns are only logical. Higher industry sales means more products that didn’t perform as expected and more colors that weren’t quite right.
There also may be a positive interpretation, according to Paul Ritter, director of Yankee’s online retail strategies planning service. Shoppers are becoming more comfortable buying products online that they formerly insisted on seeing or touching in person, such as clothing and jewelry.
But there’s a negative explanation, Ritter says, and it’s a reflection of the online industry’s poor performance record during the 1999 holiday season. Many shoppers may have hedged their bets, ordering the same item from multiple sites, figuring that they’d keep whichever one arrived first and return the rest.
Hopefully, that phenomenon won’t be repeated when holiday 2001 rolls around.
The e-tailers that survived the brutal spring 2000 shakeout mostly received high marks during the recent Christmas season for having enough of the right inventory and getting the goods delivered on time. Just like real retailers.
Face lift: Crate & Barrel’s Michigan Avenue flagship store is getting a well-deserved makeover after 11 years of heavy customer traffic.
New counter tops and fixtures are being installed, and some departments are moving around, although the store will remain open during the process, says Bette Kahn, Crate & Barrel spokeswoman. The store’s distinctive curved white exterior will remain untouched, she says.
The biggest change is likely to be a welcome one for Crate’s Epicurean customers. The store’s gourmet cooking area, which has been squeezed in on the second floor behind the soaring atrium, will be enlarged and moved to a more prominent spot on the first floor.
Tabletop items such as flatware and dishes will be consolidated on the second floor, and seasonal items will move from the first floor to the second. Furniture will continue to be housed on the third and fourth floors.
“By Mother’s Day, it will all be complete and beautiful,” Kahn promises.
Speaking of proud mothers, Kahn says she is thrilled that her son, Highland Park native David Kahn, has been named publisher of the New Yorker, the storied literary magazine.
Kudos: Mark Shale’s store at 900 N. Michigan Ave. was named the overall winner in the annual “Retail Store of the Year” design competition sponsored by Chain Store Age magazine.
The upscale men’s and women’s apparel store got high marks for its free-flowing spaces, dramatic staircase and imaginative splashes of color. It also was praised for its clean-edged fixtures that show off Mark Shale’s career-oriented product without getting in the way.
“Its clean, understated presentation and inviting, contemporary look speak to the way today’s customers dress,” Chain Store Age wrote.
The store’s uncluttered feel was inspired by the Modernist school of the 1940s and ’50s, says Stan Weisbrod, project manager for Charles Sparks & Co., the Westchester design firm that created the new store.
With only eight stores, Mark Shale won’t be able to make wide use of its award-winning prototype. However, it will incorporate some of the same principles and design elements when it remodels or expands its existing stores.
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