Is it me or does Christmas descend upon us earlier every year? By mid October, I’d seen Santa Claus fighting for shelf space with the grim reaper, hampers disguising themselves as cauldrons and fairy floss being attacked by fairy lights. By the time Halloween actually came around, kitsch glittery trees were already adorning the stores and shopping centers.
In the UK, Selfridges opened their Christmas shop on August 2nd, the earliest ever in their history. In mid-summer (well, if you can call it that, you know, those 2 hours of sunshine that hit in early August?), they were selling everything from pine trees, crackers, paint-your-own baubles and jingle bells to a £500 life-size donkey. Naturally, no home would be complete without one!
And here, Telstra launched its 55 days of Christmas campaign online on November 1st offering customers a free (and somewhat random) gift each day by opening a window on the calendar - at the same time cross-promoting one of their products.
So are people really in the mindset to be planning Christmas so early? Well the truth is no, but ‘Christmas theatre’ does a great job of injecting much needed retail experience into stores a lot earlier, whether we like our ghouls and gold in the manger or not.
This year more than ever, that theatre will be paramount to pull people in off the streets and away from ‘the global store’. As the Aussie dollar flutters around parity with the US dollar, more and more purchases are being made online. In fact johnlewis.co.uk took more money online last year (£327M) than its largest flagship store on Oxford Street London (£320M). Now, with David Jones offering e-commerce in time for Christmas, it will be interesting to see how the impact of the Internet affects their revenue split post January.
It’s not hard to see why online Christmas shopping is becoming so popular, not only are people becoming excessively time poor but many retailers are also offering incredibly attractive shipping deals. In fact, it was the 2 words ‘FREE SHIPPING” that helped save Christmas in the US last year.
I read an article recently stating that for every US cent increase in the Aussie dollar, there is roughly an additional one percent volume paid through Paypal. Which means that Australian retailers will be fighting harder than ever this year for a share of the Christmas pudding.
And of course all of this is great for consumers. Suddenly the array of gift ideas for her has flourished into a world of Victoria’s Secrets undies, Louboutin heels and Beckham bags. Better still, we’re able to expand our casual repertoire of socks and jocks for dad into Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts, FCUK pants and Best Buy gadgets. Even if he doesn’t appreciate any of it, at least you’ll be paying a fraction of the price you might pay for brands on our own shores.
Undoubtedly this is going to have a huge impact on Australian retail. With both Westfield and the high street stores enticing us into buying our Christmas gifts from them, it’s going to take more than plastic trees and Cliff Richard’s rendition of ‘Ding Dong Merrily On High’ to make us part with our hard earned cash. In fact, this year more than ever, stores are really going to have to step it up a notch and provide more excitement, more innovative displays and better deals.
I guess that kind of thing happening at any time of the year is a good thing, so perhaps I’ll just have to accept that bats, cats and witches’ hats are going to be forming part of the nativity scene from hereon in.
