Holiday recap offers valuable solutions

By Andrea Lillo -- Home Textiles Today, 1/22/2001 12:00:00 AM

NEW YORK -With the second online holiday season just ended, NRF's Internet Commerce Council brought together a panel including smarterkids.com, a pure-play retailer, and Target, a bricks-and-clicks retailer, to share their experiences with the season.

iCC's "Second Annual Holiday Recap: A Lesson To Learn From The Internet Retailing Front" was moderated by Stephen Zrike, senior analyst, online retail, Forrester Research, who noted that 60 percent more people were online during the 2000 holiday season than a year ago.

At Target, the challenge for Cathy David, target.com's general manager, has been to make the online and on-land shopping experience seamless between the Target stores and website. Part of that strategy was to redesign the site and focus on the gift-giving season, she said.

But the website and the stores cannot be treated as the same, especially since people have different expectations of both and the assortment must reflect that. The 15,000 skus offered on the site consists of carefully selected merchandise.

Higher-level items sell better online, she said, citing a $600 scooter that did well. Domestics such as slipcovers and down comforters do "amazing on the web," she said, perhaps because people can do more research on these items online.