Plenty of media sources reported server crashes for some retailers hoping to cash in on a “Cyber Monday” sales bounce to kick off the holiday shopping season. But while 404 messages were as common as slip-and-fall incidents in the parking lot of your local mall, the damage to concerned retailers (i.e. Victoria’s Secret, The Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Borders, Comp.USA and Home Depot to name a few) could be significant.
Here’s why:
This holiday season is brewing up a “perfect storm” for a financial disaster when it comes to Q4 sales for retailers. Not only is 2008′s holiday shopping season five days shorter (thanks to the floating Thanksgiving holiday and leap year), it also has one fewer weekends than last year. Add to that the fact that we’ve all just learned that the US has been in a financial recession since last December (still not clear as to what took so damn long to figure that one out) and a majority of consumers are saying they’re tightening their spending belt this year.
The result: it looks like the first few days of the holiday shopping season will be the only chance any retailer stands for making a “silk purse” out of the sow’s ear that is 2008.
Prelminary reports on Black Friday and the following weekend were that sales figures were up marginally over 2007 (+3%) – but none of the pundits are expecting that positive margin to hold.
Monday was a bad time to have your server go down.
I’m sure we’ll get plenty of explanations as to “why” things happened the way they did. Let’s hope these retailers are around next year to put the lessons they’ve learned to good use.
Earlier this week, we ran 
Books are a big deal in our family. In fact, with four kids, the only gift we know will go over well with all of them are gift cards to the local Border’s. But that’s not because of brand loyalty to the bookseller – it’s because my wife and kids love books.
