The Drive-Thru: Cyber Monday, Peloton's bizarre ad, and a 90-year-old Macy's store being taken over by Amazon
Hello! I hope everyone had a fruitful Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
If this is your first time reading The Drive-Thru, I'm Kate Taylor, retail correspondent at Business Insider. If you want to stay informed on everything related to shopping, food, and more throughout the holiday shopping season, subscribe to the weekly newsletter here.
Now, let's get into this weird week, in which a bizarre commercial for Peloton somehow ended up being a bigger - or at least more drawn out - story than Cyber Monday.
A tumultuous start to the holiday shopping season
We survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday! Some big-picture takeaways:
- Shopper visits to physical stores on Black Friday dropped 6.2%, compared to the same 24-hour period a year earlier. Online spending jumped more than 19.6%.
- Bloomingdale's had the best in-store experience, while Victoria's Secret, Sears, and Ross were among the worst.
The move to online shopping comes with a few speed bumps:
- Record-high package volumes are putting pressure on retailers and logistics companies. And, police are preparing for even more porch pirates stealing gifts.
- In related news, a group of armed robbers raided an Amazon delivery truck in Atlanta and stole 60 packages.
- Walmart customers are angry after receiving emails cancelling their Black Friday orders. Walmart told Bethany that the emails were due to a "technical error" and that the retailer expects to fulfill the orders before Christmas.
Read Hayley on big picture takeaways here and Bethany on Walmart's weird emails here.
Peloton's bizarre Black Friday ad moves markets
Peloton aired a commercial over Thanksgiving weekend and many people hated it. I personally thought the ad - which shows a woman working out on a Peloton bike over the course of a year - was not great, but not particularly offensive. I certainly did not anticipate this was going to be a week-long news cycle! And yet, we've got:
- People being confused by the commercial
- Peloton losing $1.5 billion in market value amid the backlash
- Peloton saying the ad was misinterpreted.
- Leaked documents help explain why Peloton aired the ad (it is trying to shed its "cultish" image).
- The Peloton husband speaks out!
Walmart extended its discount for employees who worked on Thanksgiving
Hayley reports that Walmart is giving employees more time to take advantage of a 15% discount, which was awarded to those who worked on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the following Saturday.
The extension comes after the company faced backlash for not giving employees who worked on and around Thanksgiving extra pay. Walmart said it decided to offer the extension due to this year's pay cycle.
Store Tour: A 90-year-old Macy's that is being taken over by Amazon
Irene visited Seattle's flagship Macy's store on Cyber Monday. She found that the top six floors have already been transformed into Amazon office space. Macy's has been banished to the bottom three levels until February 2020, when it plans to close for good.
One employee told her: "It's business as usual, happy holidays, until the liquidators come in January."
Read the full store tour, which serves as a pretty nice metaphor for the future of retail, here.
Everything else you need to know:
- Eugene Kim is back at BI and got his hands on leaked footage of Amazon's biannual all-hands meeting.
- More than 700,00 people will soon lose food-stamp benefits under a new Trump administration rule. Here's why that's a massive retail story.
- Shoshy declares Wegmans superior to Publix.
- Starbucks updated its dress code.
- Papa John's said that its pizza recipe remains unchanged, despite founder John Schnatter saying he ate more than 40 pizzas in 30 days and it doesn't taste as good. Schnatter is also getting divorced and suing the advertising firm that he claims leaked a conference call in which he says the n-word.
- If you're worried about the treatment of Amazon drivers as holiday deliveries rev up, maybe leave them some snacks.
- How to enter to win free Starbucks for life.
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