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Online retail is growing at a much faster rate than in-store sales, new research has claimed. According to the second annual PayPal Online Retail Report, undertaken by Experian, retail sales via the internet are set to increase in value by £8 billion between now and the end of 2012, while store retail should increase by £3.3 billion.
If e-tail does expand as predicted, the web would account for 10.4 per cent of total retail sales. This means more than one in every £10 spent in the UK would be via the internet.
Carl Scheible, Managing Director of PayPal UK, said: “Online retail is booming even in the current economic uncertainty because shoppers turn to the internet when they are trying to be thrifty.
“Two-thirds of online shoppers are now convinced their money goes further online compared to less than half who believed it last year, an increase of 8.5 million people.”
He described online retail as the “silver lining in the economic crisis”.
Meanwhile, retail analyst at accountancy and business advisory firm BDO, Jamie Talmage, has called the online sales channel as “the real engine of growth for most retailers”. However, he suggested that blurring the boundaries between channels, such as allowing customers to order online and pick up in store, is the next important step businesses in the industry must take.
The online retail giant Amazon is to buy the quirky website Woot. The website started out as a deal a day website and has now expanded to become a $100million company. Amazon are now eager to get their hands on the company and Woot.com have welcomed the move.
Woot was founded in 2004 by Matt Rutledge who began selling one item a day on the site, including various electrical goods. The site quickly became very popular and has now amassed a very eager following of Woot fans. The move towards an Amazon takeover was announced on the Woot blog, it outlined the fact that although there would be an Amazon takeover, the company would still remain a separate entity and it would not operate alongside the Amazon main website.
Rutledge, put his employees at ease today by announcing that although Amazon is taking over, things will still remain the same. The essence of Woot would still be there and Amazon would just be like a new member of staff.
Lovers of the eccentric website are now eager to find out the exact settlement figure, but neither Amazon nor Woot are disclosing this figure. The move is definitely going ahead, however but as the founder Rutledge stated there will be no change to the company ethos.
A few financial pundits and lovers of both websites have said that although the move will benefit the company in terms of a huge cash injection, they are unsure of the effect it will have on the general following of the site. Woot was founded by one man with one vision and although Rutledge has reassured his staff that things won’t change there is a possibility that they will, either for the better or for the worse.
