The latest report from Volo Commerce reveals that in the past three years, the Monday before Halloween generated record sales for ecommerce retailers selling fancy dress. Interestingly, the report also found that on that Monday most customers prefer to do their Halloween shopping around 8 pm.
Compared with the sales recorded through the month of October, on this specific Monday, retailers sell three times more than the average total daily sales reported over October’s first two weeks.
Overall, each year (2013-2015) in October, merchants sold four times more than the average monthly sales over the whole year.
Paul Watson, CEO of Volo Commerce, comments saying: “It is vital retailers pre-empt spikes in demand caused by specific celebrations. With our reports we want to help ecommerce retailers prepare ahead of time to get their stock and logistics ready to handle the increased demand. Preparation is key to getting better deals from suppliers, preparing listings and strengthening their delivery capabilities”.
In terms of Average Order Value (AOV) in 2015, customers were willing to increase their spend on fancy dress by up to 20% to £19.41 on the Monday prior to Halloween compared to the first day of October.
Another interesting celebration that appears to have a significant influence on fancy dress sales is World Book Day (UK & Ireland). This year, fancy dress online retailers using Volo’s platform saw their 2016 sales increase by 55% in February compared to 2015.
Paul added “This type of celebration offers great opportunities for retailers to stand out from the competition and engage customers with interesting, relevant product bundles and exciting price promotions. This can entice customers to spend more while balancing stock by selling products that otherwise would not be in such high demand“.
