Cabela's, Nike and Under Armour was among 10 online retailers that earned spots on the Kurt Salmon Santa’s Good List for Holiday Shipping for speedily delivering multi-unit Cyber Monday orders in an average of 2.6 days, more than twice as fast as the average retailer Cyber Monday fulfillment time of 5.7 days.
In order to uncover which retailers are excelling at peak season fulfillment, Kurt Salmon analyzed shipping times for orders placed on Cyber Monday from 59 retailers across a broad range of categories, including traditional big boxes, department stores, specialty retailers and online-only e-tailers.
Santa’s Good List for Holiday Shipping:
Delivered in 1 Day: Google Delivered in 2 Days: Net-A-Porter, Walgreens Delivered in 3 Days: Amazon, Barneys New York, Cabela’s, Nike, Staples, TOMS, Under Armour
Google tops the list for the first time this year, while Net-A-Porter and Barneys New York are repeat winners.
Cyber Monday fulfillment times put retailers on track to deliver against their holiday season goals of speeding up holiday fulfillment by two days to 6.1 days this year.
“Retailers who fulfilled Cyber Monday orders in three days or less are clearly firing on all cylinders,” said Steve Osburn, retail strategist at Kurt Salmon. “So far this holiday season, consumers are benefiting from retailers’ accurate forecasts; improved alignment between merchandising, marketing and distribution; and better inventory visibility.”
(Jingle) Bells and Whistles for Fulfillment
Amid a flurry of sales, free shipping is increasingly becoming table stakes for shopping cart conversion. This year, 78 percent of retailers offered free shipping on Cyber Monday, up from 70 percent in 2013. Not all free shipping offers were created equally, however: 51 percent of retailers offered free shipping on all orders, whereas 49 percent required that consumers’ shopping carts hit a spending threshold to qualify.
In addition, retailers are adopting new fulfillment methods, including in-store pick up, as part of their omnichannel strategy. This year, 37 percent of retailers offered in-store pickup as an option for select products on Cyber Monday. Best Buy and Lowe’s, for example, had orders ready within one hour for pickup, an ideal offering for busy shoppers who needed holiday gifts fast.
Same-day delivery options were giving Santa a run for his money, promising to deliver purchases in less than a day. With industry leaders such as Google and Amazon investing in their same-day delivery capabilities in addition to start-ups like Deliv, retailer offerings and consumer adoption are likely to follow suit. More retailers are also leveraging ship-from-store capabilities to fulfill orders, but in some cases, this may have contributed to delays in multi-item order fulfillment and inventory challenges.
Some Turbulence for Santa’s Sleigh
While retailers were largely able to keep pace with the uptick in orders, Santa’s sleigh did hit some turbulence. During high demand on Cyber Monday, 16 percent of retailers Kurt Salmon analyzed had website issues, including crashes, during check-out. Best Buy’s Black Friday crash was a good sign of consumer demand, but issues with site functionality can frustrate shoppers, and, in a competitive season, site challenges can lead to missed sales opportunities. In addition, inventory was an issue, with close to 15 percent of retailers identifying out-of-stock items at checkout. Overall, 34 percent of retailers were unable to complete the multi-item orders within two weeks of Cyber Monday, up from 2013 (25 percent). In most cases, it was one or two high-demand items in the order that proved problematic.
“While we saw a few hiccups in Cyber Monday fulfillment, retailers responded well to significant sales spikes,” said Osburn. “This bodes well for last-minute e-commerce orders, but there are always variables. In December, 2013, 15 percent of last-minute orders did not reach their destination by Christmas, and despite retailers’ adjustments, consumers would be wise to give themselves a buffer or upgrade delivery options when placing orders over the next week.”
Kurt Salmon is a global management consulting firm dedicated to building the market leaders of tomorrow.
