Retail Experts Anticipate Solid Growth in Holiday Sales

Garrick Brown of Cushman & Wakefield

CHICAGO—The holiday shopping season is already underway, and researchers from several of the nation’s top real estate firms say they see many positive signs. As reported in GlobeSt.com earlier this week, for example, JLL officials predicted that sales would grow between 3.5% and 4.0% over last year’s totals. 

And Cushman & Wakefield predicted a similar amount of growth in a recent webinar that examined the impact of e-commerce on the supply chain and brick-and-mortar retail. The program, “Bricks vs. Clicks,” focused on why Cyber Monday has begun eclipsing Black Friday, and how the growth of e-commerce will influence the market in 2017 and beyond.

Ben Conwell, the company’s commerce fulfillment practice group leader, and a former real estate director for Amazon, and Garrick Brown, head of retail research for the Americas, led the discussion.

“This is a make or break time for retail,” Brown said, as “November and December comprise the biggest shopping season of the year. The good news is that we anticipate 3.7% overall holiday retail sales growth in 2016, despite the election and hinging somewhat on weather as a wildcard. A number of interesting trends will impact both bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce retail this season – including the continuation of ‘Christmas creep,’ with discounting and markdowns motivating bargain-seeking consumers to start shopping earlier.”

Benjamin Conwell of Cushman & Wakefield

The webinar also addressed what online shopping, the holiday preparations of delivery companies, Amazon’s activities, and changing customer demands regarding delivery, among other issues, could mean for the industrial and retail real estate sectors.

Conwell noted that demand remains strong across all industrial product types, including large peripheral fulfillment centers and smaller close-in fulfillment centers, sortation hubs and last-mile depots. In some cases, major retailers are working to leverage their bricks-and-mortar stores in this mix.

“Last-mile fulfillment continues to be the main driver and biggest challenge for e-commerce,” Conwell said. “Retailers are increasing their push to be better, smarter, faster and cheaper, and to position the right inventory closer to the customer at the right time. Delivery companies are working hard to surging demand, especially during the holidays. Consider this: UPS is projecting 13 of 21 holiday delivery days before Christmas to exceed 30 million shipments, as compared to average non-peak volumes of 18 million shipments per day.”