Yes, Black Friday marks the height of the holiday season – but the day itself can hardly be taken in isolation. For critical context, we took a look at the wider weekend to see how different the holiday season in 2021 has been. Looking at the Placer.ai Mall Index on Black Friday alone showed visits to indoor malls down just 8.5% compared to 2019, while visits were down 9.2% for outdoor malls. And while the visits marked a significant peak for malls and retailers, looking at the wider weekend metrics paints an even rosier picture.
December 2, 2021
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Business
Beauty Recap
Offline beauty visits came roaring back as restrictions on brick and mortar retail began to lift in spring 2021. Since then, foot traffic has remained impressively strong. As the sector heads into a critical holiday season, we dove into the data for Ulta, Sephora, and Sally Beauty to find out how the leading beauty retailers are performing in their owned stores and in their new collaborations with Target and Kohl’s.
The expectation heading into Black Friday 2021 was that while the day would continue to drive significant traffic peaks, it was unlikely to reach the standards set in years past. And early data from Black Friday appears to prove this idea correct. Visits for most retailers were up significantly compared to a 2020’s limited Black Friday, but down compared to the equivalent day in 2019 – although there were exceptions to this rule. Walmart saw a 2.8% visit increase, and Target just a 3.1% decline compared to 2019.
While most of the retail world looked anxiously towards Black Friday preparations and results, the grocery sector knows that a far more important day comes before – Turkey Wednesday. Turkey Wednesday marks the day before Thanksgiving when grocers around the country see a powerful visit surge – for some, the pinnacle of their annual visits. How did this key supermarket holiday play out in 2021, and which other sectors benefited?
Our latest white paper checks in with one of the pandemics major winners – the grocery sector. Following our Summer Grocery update, we dove into nationwide, regional, and brand-level visit data to understand what has changed and what has returned to pre-pandemic patterns. Year-over-two-year (Yo2Y) grocery visits have been consistently up nationwide in recent months, with weekly visits in October surpassing 2019 numbers by 5.2%, 7.1%, 7.2%, and 9.3% for the weeks of October 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, respectively.
Black Friday is rapidly approaching, and with it, questions of whether the holiday retail season will fulfill its unique 2021 potential. How could the season play out? We dove into the data to break it down. Black Friday, known traditionally for the mass outpouring of brick and mortar retail enthusiasm, was better defined in 2020 as ‘what can go wrong, will go wrong’. Following weeks of improvement in overall retail, rising COVID cases in November created severe limitations for even the top offline retailers.
Bath & Body Works, Best Buy, and Dick’s Sporting Goods may operate in radically different retail categories, but these chains do have one thing in common – all three brands survived the pandemic with flying colors. We dove into the foot traffic trends to better understand where these category leaders are positioned going into 2022. Bath & Body Works made headlines over the summer when its parent company took the Bath & Body Works name and spun off Victoria’s Secret into an independent company.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into the latest from AMC Theatres and GameStop and break down the latest Mall Index update. Though the hype surrounding AMC Theatres and GameStop was more Reddit-driven, public market intrigue and had less to do with actual performance, the two brands had indeed been recovering in terms of visits. And while a steady recovery is worth celebrating in this unique market environment, the latest data shows just how significant those returns have been.
Visits to popular burger fast-food chains such as Portillo’s, In-N-Out, Shake Shack, and White Castle have been particularly strong over the past couple of months. We dove into the data to better understand foot traffic patterns to these cult favorites. Many of the burger brands analyzed are relatively regionally focuses – Portillo’s has a high concentration of Chicago locations, In-N-Out is strong in California, Shake Shack is particularly popular in the tri-state area, and White Castle has a loyal Midwestern and Northeastern following.
As the pandemic’s retail effects took hold, the off-price apparel sector was put in a particularly difficult position because of their heavy dependence on brick and mortar traffic. Yet, the recovery period had been the reverse, with many of the sector’s key strengths aligning perfectly with wider trends. The value the brands in the space provided was well suited to a period of wider economic uncertainty, while the treasure hunt experience drove interest in being back in stores. In addition, the orientation towards the suburbs and the wide geographic distribution also helped the sector ride the various waves of the recovery period.
Pre-pandemic, there was a fairly widespread sentiment against the continued value of the department store. And with news around store closings and bankruptcy proceedings dominating headlines in the last year and a half, it’s clear that the pandemic hasn’t done the sector any favors. Yet, the tide does appear to be turning with key trends working in the sector’s favor ahead of the holiday season.
As visits across the wider retail landscape ebb and flow with success finding peaks and valleys, Walmart and Target stand out for their ability to thrive almost regardless of the wider context. And after hitting heights in the summer, both brands appear headed for another strong holiday season. Target’s visit jumps have continued nearly unabated throughout the year, with the summer months marking new heights as visits in July and August rose 15.8% and 15.9% compared to the same months in 2019.
Visits to The Home Depot, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Tractor Supply soared in 2020. Now, with 2021 almost behind us, we dove into one of the pandemic’s biggest retail winners to uncover the long-term impact of the 2020 home improvement craze. The Home Depot, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Tractor Supply are holding on to their 2020 visit gains, with August visits to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Tractor Supply exceeding August 2019 visits by 11.3%, 13.2%, and 44.0%, respectively.
Last year’s Halloween was essentially cancelled by COVID as the United States entered its third COVID wave. This year, the holiday overlapped with the waning of the fourth wave, so we looked into the foot traffic data to find out – did 2020’s pent-up demand lead to a spike in halloween-related retail visits? Although all three brands analyzed still had year-over-two-year visit deficits in September, Party City managed to close the gap in October to exhibit a 5.0% increase in visits compared to 2019.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into Destination XL and The Paper Store – two brands who have made impressive comebacks in 2021 – and take the opportunity to check in with the plus size apparel sector. At the height of the pandemic retail crisis, Destination XL looked particularly vulnerable. But as the country opened back up and consumers headed back to stores, the big and tall leader has made an impressive recovery.
A year and a half after the initial lockdowns, we dove into the foot traffic of the fitness sector to see how visits to this hard-hit sector are recovering. Many gym rats discovered the convenience and cost-effectiveness of home workouts over the pandemic, leading some experts to predict that the COVID closures would mark the beginning of the end of gyms. But by summer, monthly visits were already inching closer to pre-pandemic levels, with year-over-two-year visit declines of just 3.2%, 3.3%, and 4.8% in June, July, and August, respectively.
In our Q3 Quarterly Index, we analyzed a wide array of brands in several major retail categories including apparel, grocery, fitness, home improvement, and superstores to bring you the latest insights and identify trends shaping retail right now. The apparel sector was hit hard by the pandemic, but foot traffic data shows that the category is bouncing back. Despite renewed COVID concerns, apparel visits grew this quarter, with foot traffic to apparel brands 3.0% higher, on average, than in Q2 2021.
In this Placer Bytes, we dove into the surge in visits to auto parts chains and looked into the latest data from Amazon Fresh to learn about the future of Amazon’s grocery push. Visits to auto parts chains have been skyrocketing since March, with year-over-two-year visits to every brand analyzed up by double digits for the past seven months. September visits were up by 26.2%, 22.8%, 17.5%, and 12.4% to O’Reilly Auto Parts, Autozone, Napa Auto Parts, and Advance Auto Parts, respectively, when compared to September 2019, to cap off two straight quarters of significant year-over-two-year growth in foot traffic.
The holiday season is on its way and while the last year and half provided an ongoing lesson in the challenges of ‘predicting’ during a pandemic, there is still value in attempting to highlight what the season could hold. Clearly the ongoing presence of COVID as an actual or potential disruptor is significant, but planning must go on and accordingly we decided to provide some of the key themes we believe will impact the holiday season.
Both Warby Parker and First Watch have been aggressively growing their offline presence. So, we dove into the foot traffic data to find out how the brick and mortar expansions are affecting visit patterns. Much has been written about Warby Parker’s brick and mortar expansion. The eyeglasses disrupter opened its first offline store in 2013 and now operates over 140 stores throughout the United States. And the growth in stores has led to a massive increase in foot traffic.
