True Religion breaks Cyber Week sales record
True Religion had its largest e-commerce volume week ever during Cyber Week (Nov. 25-30).
The specialty denim and apparel brand is reporting that e-commerce sales during the 2021 edition of Cyber Week rose to a record-setting $7 million. These sales represent the largest volume week in the company’s history, reflecting a 45% increase in sales from Cyber Week 2020. The company also announced that during this same period, its online conversion rate and traffic rose 20% and 15%, respectively.
True Religion said that it expects to generate “well in excess” of $100 million in e-commerce sales during 2022, and anticipates that online sales will represent 50% of revenues by 2025, up from 35% in 2021.
“We are thrilled with our record-setting performance during the critical Cyber Week period, which includes our biggest sales days of the year,” said Michael Buckley, CEO of True Religion. “As part of our business transformation, we have spent a significant amount of time learning who our customers are, what they want and how they want to shop, and we are now able to deliver that experience. Our strategic decision to diversify our marketing channels has resulted in significantly increased demand for our products and our focus on inventory management allowed us to satisfy this demand throughout the entire Cyber Week shopping event.”
“While this is proving to be a challenging holiday season for some retailers, we are pleased with our performance to date,” said Buckley. “We believe our commitment to serving our customers by transforming to a digital-first brand positions us well for the remainder of this holiday season and beyond.”
“We have a tremendous opportunity to scale the True Religion brand through product expansion, expanded distribution channels, and enhanced digital marketing efforts,” said True Religion executive VP of digital Angela Clark. Our digital-first mindset has been instrumental in propelling the brand into a true omnichannel experience for our customers, regardless of where they shop.”
Cyber Week – a closer look
Reports varied on overall digital sales results during Cyber Week 2021. Adobe recorded a total of $33.9 billion in online spending for Cyber Week (Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday), down 1.4% year-over-year. This figure includes a 1.3% year-over-year dip in Black Friday sales from $9 billion to $8.9 billion, and flat Thanksgiving Day sales of $5.1 billion.
However, Salesforce’s findings were more positive. During Cyber Week (Nov. 25-29), Salesforce says U.S. digital sales reached $61 billion, up 4% year-over-year. Since online shopping began rapidly accelerating at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, industry experts have been advising that the pandemic was not so much creating new e-commerce demand as amplifying existing trends.
This year’s Cyber Week results back up that assertion, as cooling digital spending growth suggests a few years’ worth of e-commerce expansion has occurred and is now leveling off. Regardless, Cyber Monday still came out the biggest single online shopping day of 2021, and the lowest estimates pegged Black Friday spending at a not so shabby $8.9 billion. Cyber Week doesn’t seem likely to be going away as a major online shopping event, but factors such as rebounding brick-and-mortar traffic and major retailers launching holiday promotions in October appear to be having an impact on its performance.
[Read more: Cyber Week will never be the same]