Some Good News from Sports Retailers

During down times it’s always nice to get some good news. Before this Black Friday, most signs pointed to weak retail performance which would have left stores in the red. Well, they’re not quite black yet but retail sales experienced a 3% gain over last year continuing the upward trend. Moreover, it turns out that sports retailers performed particularly well.

The online stores for both the NFL and the NBA posted record increases as compared to last year. The NBAStore.com and its New York City outpost had a combined sales increase of 38%. Their best selling item? Chris Paul jersey. Record sales for NFLShop.com made Black Friday their third highest grossing day ever. Jets sales, aided by Brett Favre, had sales up almost 400% and Giants sales were just about half that. Even the out of season MLB brought in 25% more in sales this season.

What contributed to these gains? For one, shoppers who have been sitting on their wallets and cash-stuffed mattresses finally opened them up and came out looking bargains. Secondly, the latter part of the previous sentence probably accounts for most of the gains. Clever and strategic bargain packaging yielded high volume sales. Discounts, two-for-ones, and other bundling were all at work on Friday.

Bottom Line: It’s a simple but important to remember sales strategy—even if your price is lower, so long as you sell a lot of it you can still post robust sales.