The holiday season is game time for LeftLane Sports, and already it has a lead over last year.
Sales between Nov. 1-16 are up 22% year over year, says Erik Fialho, chief operating officer at the members-only, flash-sale endurance, outdoor and action sports gear seller.
While the unconventional U.S. presidential election cycle likely has affected sales over the past several months, the retailer is not worried about its long-term impact, Fialho says.
“Election Day (Nov. 8) and the day after were relatively slow, but sales have picked up since then and continue to be strong,” he says.
This correlates with data from digital marketing firm HookLogic Inc. Its client data suggests online retail sales dipped 5% on the day before the election, 16% on Election Day and 23% the following day. But HookLogic, a division of ad technology vendor Criteo S.A., says e-retail sales were up 24% year over year on the Thursday after the election “as consumer confidence rebounded and Americans were ready to get back to their holiday shopping.”
“Hopefully, with the election over, people will begin to get into normal holiday routines,” LeftLane’s Fialho says.
To keep shoppers in the spending mood, LeftLane Sports featured early “Black Friday” sales on its site.
The retailer is also preparing for a surge in traffic—especially on mobile—as consumers use their smartphones to check prices while in store on Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving.
“We work directly with the brands we sell to ensure that pricing is lower than anywhere else,” Fialho says. “Price checking at stores can actually benefit us as customers find that our prices and service are better than our competitors.”
The retailer also recently relaunched its website to have responsive design, which allows the website to automatically fit to the size of smartphone or whatever device a consumer is using. LeftLaneSports.com now allows consumers to sort products by size, price and brand on smartphones, and images are up to 54% larger compared with the old site, he says.
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