2020 will go down in history as one of the most challenging years of the modern era. The financial and economic hit to small and medium businesses has been relentless starting with bushfires, switching to floods, and hail, and flowing into a seemingly never-ending global health crisis bringing the worlds biggest economies to their knees.
The Australian retail marketplace has been rocked to the core from these events destabilising some of the oldest most stable retail juggernauts but yet catapulting other businesses into territories never before seen.
On one hand the already vulnerable retail sector has been shaken to its bones as the declining numbers of customers entering retail stores was brought to a grinding halt through the mandatory closure of shops, shopping centres and all retail outlets swept across the country. On the reverse side customers who were not yet completely comfortable with the eCommerce were forced to turn to online shopping as their only real source of purchasing from their favourite and new brands
This forced adoption to ecommerce for many Australians caused a ripple effect throughout the ecommerce space and through to the Logistics solutions sitting behind. Many retailers had to maintain their customer base by digital acquisition and found distribution centres that could not cope and delivery chains that buckled under new volumes.
Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2019 was the biggest online shopping event on record, and a growth of 31.6% on 2018, but this was then eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 which brought more than 200,000 online shoppers into the market and a 6.8% growth on December 2019 peak shopping period which also encompassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Similar numbers were seen across our own customer base with the month of December 2019 being our largest on record, and then seeing this eclipsed by March 2020 with a 30% increase, April growing to 42%, and May still 38% greater than the previous peak period last year despite this being the first month of retail stores opening the doors once again.
Our trusted national freight provider, Australia Post, were forced to publicly admit defeat and extend transit times, cancel premium service guarantees, employ fleets of new postie and parcel delivery contractors and ship parcels internationally on boats rather than planes due to capacity issues across the network.
The shinning light throughout this chaos period is the end customer has accepted the challenges we all face through this unprecedented times, and have become the most accepting I have seen in a decade of being in eCommerce, understanding that last minute shopping isn’t the best idea, and needing the parcel the very next day actually isn’t necessary. Getting orders delivered in a reasonable timeframe, being thankful it arrived, being appreciative of the workers who made it happen, and getting a quality product at a great price, delivered to their door in a convenient way has become the accepted norm.
We now enter the second half of 2020 and the rise of the second wave of COVID-19, we watch in horror as Victoria suffers the worst of the resurgence and closes its doors yet again, only weeks after opening them, and we all sit hoping and wishing this isn’t the next wave to wash across Australia.
For e-commerce retailers there is a bitter sweet feeling as the next wave of customers turn to online shopping as their method of buying their products, and we have to start facing the reality of this being the situation for the remainder of 2020 or beyond. Do we dare to consider the daunting reality of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas shopping 2020 all occurring with retail shops and shopping centres having their doors firmly closed. What will be the statistics we will be talking about in 6 months from today and does 2020 hold any more surprises than we have already faced ?
