The 2021 holiday season will be a bonanza for online spending and is set to rack up sales of $1.3 trillion between the November-January window, up nearly 10% from last year. All estimates are pointing to this being the strongest holiday spending season since 1999 in terms of growth rates.
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday are US inventions, they’ve become global events, and with Christmas and New Year sales not far behind, retailers everywhere need to ensure that they’re prepared for any holiday-fueled surge in online spending. These peak sales events are not just an opportunity for cross-border brands to sell into the US, but also for US brands to tap into growing demand from the rest of the world.
Online retailers will know of the regular key seasonal peaks and drivers. While rising sales are always welcome news for businesses during the holiday season, 2021 brings ominous warnings and the retail ecosystem undergoing a sustained stress test. Pandemic-related shipping slowdowns and labor shortages are currently throwing global supply chain planners into chaos. Will empty shelves and merchandise shortages threaten retailer profits and put Christmas at risk? Only time will tell.
So, Reach company, for example, is focusing on helping retailers get prepared to meet what are clearly going to be some tricky fulfillment issues. For most cross-border e-commerce brands, their ambitions are focused on scaling up and expanding to serve more customers, wherever they are in the world. For smaller online retailers especially, they need an e-commerce platform that’s strong and flexible enough to grow online fast and support offline areas of the business, as the opportunity arises.
Ecommerce Platforms Need Agility to Scale and Thrive
Reach knows from recent events that external forces play a huge role in creating unprecedented spikes in global demand. The importance of choosing a platform that can successfully scale to cope with new demands, markets, payment methods, and capable of driving aggressive growth ambitions online, cannot be underestimated.
With Reach’s optimized API technology designed specifically for cross-border retail e-commerce platforms, and its game-changing Merchant of Record “MOR” model retailers can use Reach’s extensive global bank network connections to process payments locally without having to establish an entity or physical local presence. Their customers will be able to hit the pay button at checkout and pay in over 100+ currencies through their favored payment methods and be assured of a smooth, seamless checkout experience that is familiar.
Businesses also get the reassurance of knowing that Reach assumes liability for all transactions, lowering the risk for the retailer as well as assuring full compliance with any local regulations.
By working with technical partners capable of responding rapidly to changing retail dynamics, and global shopping habits, retailers can be confident of handling rapidly escalating e-commerce sales with ease, inside and outside of the holiday shopping seasons.
For more information, visit www.withreach.com.
