1/ THREAD: Time for another set of charts on the real-time economic and market impact of COVID-19, using proprietary data from :
Conversation
2/ Let's start with e-commerce, where we have first-party data that captures transactions by category and not just by store.
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3/ Last week I pointed out a category divergence: animals & pet supplies exploding, apparel & accessories collapsing. That divergence still exists, but has come back a lot from the extremes seen 2 weeks ago; perhaps an early sign of a return to normalcy?
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4/ Two other major e-commerce categories doing well are Electronics (+40% YOY) and Home & Garden (+31% YOY). This is almost certainly driven by the replacement of brick-and-mortar sales by online sales.
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5/ Health & Beauty shows a lot of volatility week to week. We suspect sales of many health products have declined recently due to a lack of inventory, which in turn was perhaps driven by heavy purchasing in early March.
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6/ Smaller categories also show divergence. Toys & Games and Sporting Goods (think: exercise equipment!) are both up a lot year-over-year, while Luggage & Bags is down a lot -- both very intuitive observations.
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7/ Overall e-commerce sales are recovering -- revenue in the last week of March 2020 was up 8% versus the corresponding week of 2019. This is not quite at the long-term trend line (expected ~20% YOY), but is nonetheless encouraging.
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8/ There are also some interesting brand-level stories in e-commerce. For example, a number of cosmetic and luxury apparel names are doing better than I would have expected in a stay-at-home situation.
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9/ Conversely, some makers of "pandemic essentials" are not doing as well as I would have thought, perhaps due to inventory issues: there's terrific demand but no supply and hence no sales.
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Replying to
Not sure that particular pivot is material in this particular channel and on this timeframe. (That could change of course). A more likely short-term explanation is that a lot of luxe brands are discounting very heavily, as points out:
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Replying to @athomasq
I've seen those types of brands offering some extreme discounts, higher than I've ever seen before. Presumably at least some would-be buyers are taking advantage of this.
Might as well hope that at least one day staying at home will end.


