Coronavirus Fears Set to Increase Ecommerce Sales
Updated March 13, 2020
You've no doubt felt the escalating uncertainty in the home furnishings market and beyond due to the rising global concerns about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The virus has already disrupted the supply chain for furnishings manufacturers importing components and furniture from Southeast Asia. But now, public health and economic effects are becoming more pronounced stateside and worldwide.
To that end, Forbes recently released an article predicting the increased growth of ecommerce in the retail sector in 2020, as a result of the virus, as people increasingly avoid physical shopping environments in favor of a more sterile digital marketplace. What's more, retail analysts state that increased ecommerce sales due to external factors, such as holidays, tend to lead to step (lasting) changes in consumer behavior (eMarketer 2020).
Andrew Lipsman, Principal Analyst at eMarketer, says, “During the holiday, a time with more concentrated buying activity, consumers spend more online creating a step-change, meaning the consumer may not return to past behavior. We may see this type of similar behavior unfold over the next few months.”
In other words: Once people start shopping a category online, they're likely to continue.
What this means is that a temporary increase in online retail due to the COVID-19 virus may lead to long term changes in consumer behavior.
With ecommerce already projected to represent 25.5% of all home furnishings sales in 2020 (eMarketer, February 2020), an additional driver like the COVID-19 virus simply adds fuel to the fire of market changes.
For decades, the industry has been dominated by the same old supply chain model: manufacturers and brands create the furniture and rely on retailers to sell it to the end customer. That model is shifting.
A small number of smart manufacturers, many of them up and coming, have already picked up on the new trend. That trend is a shift from B2B sales to direct to consumer sales. The internet has leveled the playing field and made it possible to reach any customer directly, without the need for a middleman. Whether your furniture ultimately ends up in a family dining room or in a quick-serve restaurant, the opportunity now is to sell directly to that customer online.
Bottom line: With or without a nudge from COVID-19 concerns, 2020's home furnishings consumer is primed to make the transition to online. It's high time that manufacturers meet them there.
Fortunately, Amber Engine has been tuned into these shifts in the marketplace for some time and has been developing solutions meant to support furnishing manufacturers as they embark on the journey to sell directly to consumers online.
Our PIM solution was specifically designed to remove many of the operational hurdles faced by manufacturers seeking to sell directly to consumers. For example, the solution provides an easy way for manufacturers to store and export product information directly into ecommerce and online marketplace templates. This can directly improve the bottom line for manufacturers by reducing manual labor (and human error) from the data management process.
Furthermore, manufacturers trying to sell directly to consumers typically run into internal operational inefficiencies when data is spread across teams and stored in disparate locations. The result is that the marketing, ecommerce, and sales teams do not have access to the most complete and up to date data about the products they’re trying to sell. For example, Frank from marketing might have updated the descriptions for your new lighting line, but everyone else is still working off the wrong spreadsheet. Centralization and collaboration are key to enterprise conducted at scale. Amber Engine acts as a single source of truth your whole organization can work from and build upon.
Here is a fuller list of benefits associated with our PIM solution:
Export directly to online marketplaces & ecommerce templates
Ensure data quality for selected channels & marketplaces
Know when your SKUs are complete and ready to be distributed
Manage pricing & product distribution for your reps, dealers, & marketplaces
Unlimited SKU creation and data storage
White Glove Customer Service
Digitize your product catalog
Centralize all product data in a Master Catalog
Lower return rates & labor costs
Drive product & market expansion
To learn more about both PIM and how we can help you sell directly to consumers during this time of change, book a demo below:
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