I had been asked a few times over the last week about my thoughts on the Zappos transaction.  I think this is a great story for innovation and startups.  Zappos started in a space many believed you could not transact online: selling shoes without people trying them on… Of course, as the world has grown increasingly comfortable transacting on the Web, that changed pretty quickly and Zappos took off.   With their focus on customer service and company culture (can watch a video by Tony Hsieh on that here), they were able to build sustaining brand advantage.

Ultimately, I think Zappos could have gone public, but Amazon stepped in and paid over 20x+ reported EBITDA of Zappos.  That’s a serious multiple, healthier than the public markets now.  And of course, in an online business at this scale there are significant capex cost, so I’m sure if you looked at cash flow, you get an even bigger premium.  Zappos built a dominant brand in a category, and Amazon stepped up and paid a premium to get the company.  To me, that’s a textbook entrepreneurial story.  I think you will continue to find next generation e-retailing companies thrive, but with an innovative new spin.  Gilt just raised money at a reported $400MM valuation, and had multiple bidders competing to get in.  There are a whole generation of companies pushing the ‘mass customization’ or ‘personalization’ theme, and doing well.  It’s all about finding a novel approach, attacking it quickly, and building scale at a brand level before someone can catch up.

I just read an initial report out of ComScore indicating this year’s Friday retail e-commerce numbers were up slightly over last year.  Online, nontravel e-tailer sales grew 1% for the day to $534MM from $531MM last year.  For the month of November, retail e-commerce sales were down 4% from last year’s numbers.  The National Retail Federation, on the other hand, is forecasting an increase of 2.2% for the full Thanksgiving weekend (with only Sunday being an estimate), on total spend of $41 billion and average customer spend up 7% from $372.57 to $347.55. 

All in all, I’d consider the data to be encouraging (relatively speaking).  It seems to me all retailers were very concerned about spend and pushed heavy discounts to the forefront to ensure the holiday season got off to a good start.  It may not bode well for retailer margins, or for the overall health of the industry for that matter, but at least a strategy of heavy discounting did create elasticity and spend with consumers.  It would have been far worse to heavily discount and feel like one was simply pushing on a rope.  People could have easily refused to put any money out this holiday season, and frankly I would have guessed we would see declines in spend.  I’m still not sure I believe the increase in average purchase size.

Walking around, things seemed to be pretty busy.  I put a couple of pictures from Macy’s and the Apple Store in NYC this weekend below.  They were jammed.

The next step is to see whether people have “forward bought” and all retailers have done is rob from tomorrow to get paid today.  I noticed several retailers offering discounts for future period purchases.  For example, at Banana Republic, upon completing a purchase, they offered a card for 20% off any item between December 2 and 22nd.  The goal is clearly to get me back into the shop.  It will be interesting to hear the data come in over the next month.  If anyone has other good anecdotal data, would certainly love to hear it!