Post on 16-Apr-2017
With Black Friday looming and the annual holiday shopping frenzy
getting into full swing, we’ve crunched the numbers from Amazon to
spot the developing trends in online purchases for October through
Thanksgiving 2016.
Early Holiday Shopping 2016: What’s Hot and What’s NotBy Nathan Rigby, VP Sales and Marketing at One Click Retail
• Sales in the Wireless category are up by $40M over last year to almost $90M• Toys are up YoY by $20M+ to more than $215M• Items in the Kitchen category are up by just under $20M to
close to $165M• Electronics are up in sales by $15M to nearly $90M• The Luxury Beauty category is up by close to $10M to
$20M+
Top 5 Product Categories (YoY Sales Growth)
Off to a slower start at the beginning of this holiday
shopping season are products in these categories
that are showing fewer sales than at this time last
year.
• Sales of Books are down by $65 million year-over-year to roughly $230 million• Home Entertainment is seeing a decline of more than $15
million to just under $50 million• Shoes category sales are down down almost $15 million
from last year to around $170 million• Video Game sales are down down by a couple of million to
about $90 million
Bottom 4 Product Categories (YoY Declines)
Of course, those are the year-over-year trends in broad
product categories, but within these groupings there are some
stand-out products for sales on Amazon. Here’s what people
are buying in droves as of October.
Hot Sellers for the 2016 Holiday Season
While sales in the overall video games category have declined
slightly when compared to this same period last year, there are
some noteworthy items that are showing robust sales. Leading the
pack is the new virtual reality headset, the PlayStation VR Launch
Bundle. PlayStation also holds the second spot with the 4 Pro. The
top selling games are Battlefield 1, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare,
and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
This Year's Top Video Games
•Cozmo - around $3M in sales so far• LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar - $1M+• LEGO Friends Amusement Park Roller Coaster - nearly
$1M• JOOLA Inside 15 Table Tennis Table with Net - just
under $1M•Barbie Dreamhouse - more than $750K
The 5 Most Popular Toys
And Hatchimals? The hatching egg toy that
is hyped to be this year's hot item comes in
at number 6 on Amazon's list of early top
sellers. We will definitely be watching for
sales to hatch on Black Friday and Cyber
Monday.
People are making fewer home entertainment purchases this year
compared to last. However, the top sellers in this category indicate the
demand for streaming the Internet through televisions remains strong.
The Roku Streaming Stick leads in sales, followed by a couple of smart
TVs, the Samsung 4K Ultra HD Smart LED, and the TCL 32-Inch 720p
Roku Smart TV.
Best Sellers in Home Entertainment
It's not Apple or Microsoft dominating laptop sales this
season. The top three sellers are the Acer Aspire E 15 Laptop,
the HP Notebook 15.6-Inch, and the ASUS 15.6-Inch Full HD
Gaming Laptop.
Top Selling Laptops
October/November might not be peak camping season in many parts
of the country, which could explain the top seller in the Outdoors
category being the Intex Comfort Plush Elevated Dura-Beam Airbed. A
seasonal peak in sales for the spare portable mattress coincides with
the beginning of holiday travel season, where many people will be
hosting out-of-town relatives.
Additional Hot Items
Visiting relatives could also explain the surge in popularity of a host of
floorcare products, such as the Hoover Carpet Basics Power Scrub Deluxe
($3M+), the iRobot Roomba 650 (around $3M), and the Dyson V8 Absolute
Cord-Free Vacuum (just under $2M).
And once the floors are clean, and you've set up a spare bed, you're going to
have to feed your guests. The Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Press
brand of pressure cooker is the top seller in the cooking appliances category.
Additional Hot Items
While these numbers are strong early indicators of the 2016 holiday season's most popular items, the
real test will be what products dominate sales in each category through the Black Friday / Cyber
Monday period. And as soon as we get that data we’ll be sharing it with you: keep an eye on our
Twitter account (@oneclickretail) on both Black Friday (Nov. 25th) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 28th)
because we’ll be tweeting live sales data about what promotions are happening on Amazon and what
kind of discounts are being offered, as well as snapshots of what’s happening within product groups.
Next week, we will also be publishing a comprehensive recap of this holiday shopping weekend on our
blog.
To get the latest and most accurate industry insights and reports, check out our weekly articles at
www.oneclickretail.com/insights, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Final Thoughts
One Click Retail (OCR) is a market leader in eCommerce data measurement, sales analytics and search optimization for brand manufacturers in North America, Europe and Asia. Thanks to our proprietary sales calculations that are 98.5% accurate down to the SKU level, OCR’s accuracy is unrivaled in the marketplace. The OCR Product Suite provides 1st and 3rd party business intelligence across the 30 largest retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Staples and Home Depot. The world’s top brands, such as Procter & Gamble, Panasonic, Nestle, Hamilton Beach and HP, rely on OCR insights to drive sales and profitability across eCommerce.
Founded in 2013 by eCommerce experts from Amazon, Walmart, Target, Overstock and other leading retailers, OCR was acquired in 2016 by Ascential plc (LSE: ASCL.L), a UK-based international B2B media company with a focused portfolio of market-leading events and information services products.
To learn more about how OCR can provide your brand with the competitive edge in today’s ecommerce marketplace, visit www.oneclickretail.com.
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