Dan Hess Quotes (14 Quotes)

Retailers turn a profit by bringing in new merchandise and pushing self-purchase categories like lingerie, shoes and denim. Retailing is an event-oriented business. Look at any national holiday, retailers seize on it and find a way to market heavily and drive traffic.

Retailers have worked tirelessly to translate the lessons of years past into improved merchandising systems and strategies, and the work is paying dividends this season.

With all these mergers, the future is unclear. This is a transitional time for vendors like Jones.

Last year, online retail totaled over 65 billion, up 26 over the prior year. That doesn't include auctions and travel, which take the number well over 100 billion.

We've just closed another great year in online commerce. Consumers spent an average of 200 million per day throughout November and December, bringing holiday growth to just about the top end of our forecast of 25 to 30 percent.

Online travel sales fared even better this year. The sector was up 35 percent versus 2002 and has more than more than doubled since 2001. Non-travel sales recovered impressively from war-related softness early in the year, with 2003 posting a healthy 22 percent total increase over 2002.

While it's clear that a broad range of online merchants saw a strong season, multi-channel retailers were standouts this year. Many of the nation's leading retail brands flexed their muscle this season, with strategies including faster delivery options, significant site redesigns and effective cross-channel promotions.

This is one of what we hope is many steps that attempt to turn around the brand. It has to start with the product.

The biggest surprise to us this year was the late-season surge in the week before Christmas. This occurred at a time when we usually see a pronounced drop-off in purchases. Instead, we saw a 57 percent growth surge driven by people buying online and picking up in stores as well as the commitment by online merchants to deliver in time.

With the exception of Christmas Day, when so many consumers turn their attention from gift shopping to gift giving, our data reported sales over 100 million dollars in each day of this latest week.

This week's strength was driven by Christmas occurring one day later in the week than last year, plus continued robust sales across most major product categories. As expected, categories such as gift certificates and flowers were standouts, thanks to the ability to send such gifts purely online or with same-day delivery.

We're this close, but we don't feel content by being this close. We're going to do everything we can to win the next game, to win the state title. That's what our goal has been from Day 1. We haven't told anyone anything otherwise. It's been our goal, and now we have a chance to achieve it.

We believe consumers' growing familiarity and confidence with online shopping, coupled with a dramatic increase in broadband penetration and continuing efforts by retailers to simplify the shopping process across channels, will translate to substantial gains for online merchants again this year.

We certainly view this as a positive. It's no secret that Gap has been struggling for quite some time.