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.
Have you heard of Monday.com? (And, no, it’s not just an antidote to Sunday scaries.) If you missed all the subway ads, billboards and YouTube ads over the last couple of years, let us fill you in: Monday.com is a SaaS product that lets teams and companies create their own workflows and applications. Teams use it for everything from task management to product roadmaps to a simplified CRM. Originally launched in 2014, Monday.com didn’t make much of a splash in the US until the middle of 2019, right after it raised $150 million.
The tech sector is well known for ambitious, blue sky thinking. Web infrastructure and website security company, Cloudflare is no exception with their stated mission to “help build a better internet.“ Though this may seem like a lofty (if somewhat ambiguous) goal, the company’s reputation for innovation, reliability, performance, and highly scalable networking make them a solid contender to actually achieve it.
According to the United Nations, India is expected to become the world's fastest growing economy next year. It will grow by 6.7% in 2022. The number one tag also applies in the mobile context. New data from App Annie reveals India to be the 2nd largest market in the world for app downloads to date in 2021. This is building on an impressive 2020, in which Indian consumers installed 24 billion apps – up 28% year on year.
Christmas is around the corner, and it’s still anyone’s guess still how Santa’s trip will go, with supply-chain break downs, pent up consumer demand, the pandemic unresolved. But Standard Media Index’s forward-bookings data, and the perspective of several industry pundits we interviewed, provide reason for optimism that advertising is in for a strong 4th quarter. “The rebound and upward trends continue and I think it will be significantly better than 2020,” says David Shiffman, executive vice president of research at iHeartMedia.
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.
Revenue grew nearly 6% across Amazon categories reaching $85.4 billion in the third quarter (July – September). To determine the top Amazon brands and the consumer behavior driving their growth, our industry managers used data from Shopper Intelligence, our eCommerce solution, to analyze the fastest-growing brands based on quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) revenue growth in top Amazon categories. Read on to see which brands and related products are capturing consumer attention, and leave with some learnings for your holiday season strategy.
Dutch Bros Coffee, the Oregon-based coffee chain popular on the West Coast, recently made its debut on the NYSE under the ticker BROS. In the two years leading up to its IPO, Dutch Bros launched market expansion plans aimed at reaching consumers in new states. An analysis of consumer transaction data found that Dutch Bros Coffee’s overall sales have more than doubled over the past two years, driven by significant growth in states where it already had a strong presence, as well as increasing sales in states, such as Texas, in which the company recently opened newer locations.
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.
As people return to the in-person experience of restaurant dining, you might expect mobile ordering to have tapered off. But food delivery apps like GrubHub, UberEats and DoorDash haven’t seen a slowdown in orders—even as they continue to make headlines for the wrong reasons. “Food delivery app usage has not slowed down, even as consumers return to in-person dining more frequently,” Alisha Kapur of Similarweb told Reuters.
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.
The ride hailing app 99 – Private Driver and Taxi, which shares the same Chinese parent company, Beijing Xiaoju Technology, as DiDi - Rider, has surpassed 100 million downloads globally. It was launched in July 2012 on Google Play and in August 2012 on iOS and surpassed its first major milestone of 50 million cumulative downloads in June 2019. It was particularly impressive that 99 Taxis reached the 100 million global download milestone in under 2.5 years since then.
Notable Hit 1: (PLNT:NYSE) On Thursday November 5 , 2021 Planet Fitness (PLNT) posted better-than-expected revenues of $154.26mm beating the consensus estimate of $135.09 (-14.2%) and in the same direction as Advan's forecasted sales. The revenue was +46.4% YoY - Advan's foot traffic data captured an increase in employee foot traffic of +58.7% YoY at its fitness clubs for Q3 2021. As a result of beating the sales and EPS, the stock opened at $91.27, up +15.5% from its previous day's closing price.
There was speculation this past summer that, come Labor Day, workers would begin their return back to the office. Fast forward some months, with the Delta variant spreading and the Great Resignation testing the market, the nature of remote work remains top-of-mind: are employees returning back to the office, or will remote work be a sustained new reality in a post-pandemic workforce? We have refreshed our May analysis on measuring workers’ return to the office via consumer foot traffic to dense urban Starbucks locations near large office buildings.*
The Dodge Momentum Index increased 10% in October to 181.2 (2000=100), from the revised September reading of 164.6. The Momentum Index, issued by Dodge Construction Network, is a monthly measure of the initial report for nonresidential building projects in planning, which have been shown to lead construction spending for nonresidential buildings by a full year. In October, commercial planning rose 14% and institutional gained 3%. The value of nonresidential building projects entering planning has staged a solid recovery this fall.
Heading into the holiday season, technology purchases from companies like AAPL, 005930-KS, DELL, and HPQ are likely to be hot items on many gift lists. In today’s Insight Flash, we use our CE Receipt data to examine these companies’ online direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales to see which ones are doing a better job of selling more premium products, which ones are getting better attachment rates, and which ones have typically seen a larger percentage of sales during the holiday period.
Workers at Deere & Co. (DE), the world’s top agriculture equipment manufacturer, walked out of its factories to demand better pay and health benefits, a move that had not be seen in over 30 years, and while the company is on track for its most successful year ever. The strike started on Oct. 14 with about 10,000 employees or about 15% of Deere’s workforce (according to Bloomberg), refusing to work in an effort to change their contracts.
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.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the automotive (OEM) category pulled the emergency brake and endured a long, uphill battle against supply chain shortages, operational hurdles, and disruptions to long-term development strategies. By April 2020, car sales in the U.S. plummeted by 47%. As we turn the corner to a new year, many of these consequences have since resolved themselves but have left permanent scars on the automotive industry.
Options for money transfers have expanded in recent years, as peer-to-peer platforms and cryptocurrency have grown in popularity as alternatives to traditional banks. Consumer transaction data reveals that Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, has accounted for a growing share of the money exchanged by U.S. consumers using international money transfer services, overtaking more established competitors like Xoom and Western Union.
