As the weather in the UK turns from mild to bloody freezing, at least toy retailers will be happy – unseasonably nice weather at this time of year is always cited as one of the reasons /excuses why consumers are holding back on their festive purchases. After this week’s cold snap, that can be comfortably ruled out.
Indeed, I have been hearing that DreamToys and the toy segment broadcast by the This Morning programme have both resulted in a measurable increase in sales for some of the featured brands, which is encouraging.
Inevitably, we saw some retailers cutting the price of certain toys on the DreamToys list by as much as 25% – this happens every year, so I guess it wasn’t a surprise, but it still feels a shame for those retailers who look to really capitalise on the coverage generated by the event. They’re left with the difficult decision as to whether to match the reductions or hope that consumers will either not be aware or be happy to pay the higher price. If toys were in short supply, or the economy was booming, I’d feel slightly more confident that some consumers wouldn’t worry too much about the price difference – however, in the current climate, I would imagine there are more cost-conscious shoppers around. Of course, discounts are being applied to a lot more than just the toys on the DreamToys list. But if the idea is that the toy retail channel as a whole gets behind DreamToys as the definitive selection of hot toys, it’s arguably a challenge when certain retailers will avoid the toys on the list due to the likelihood of them being price promoted elsewhere.
Internet network Cloudflare suffered a major outage on Tuesday, triggering waves of error messages on websites across the globe for a large part of the day. One UK-based online retailer posted on LinkedIn that the outage cost his company £250,000k in lost revenue. It certainly illustrates just how fragile and vulnerable digital infrastructure can be – and this wasn’t even the result of a hack. Coming in the midst of Black Friday season – less a day or even a weekend, more a whole month these days – it certainly didn’t help eCommerce retailers during their peak period. The outage also impacted ChatGPT, which must have been a blow to those people who rely on it to post their thoughts on LinkedIn.
Read the rest here.
