1. Online outbreak: e-commerce sales increased by 49% in April
The Digital Economy Index report released by Adobe shows that in April, US e-commerce sales jumped 49%. Among them, daily sales of online groceries increased by 110%, book sales doubled, and electronic product sales also increased by 58%. US e-commerce experienced sales similar to “Black Friday”.
In addition, according to foreign media reports, US retail sales in May increased by 1.4% year-on-year, a significant improvement from the 5.4% decline in April. Although physical stores have been reopened one after another, American consumers still insist on shopping online.
Frank Poore, CEO of e-commerce software provider CommerceHub, said that despite the overall downward trend in retail spending since February, e-commerce has seen “massive” growth. CommerceHub’s retail customers reported that online orders increased by more than 100% between April 1 and May 31 compared with the same period last year, a rate “close to the peak demand during the holiday season.”
2. Physical impact: 2,294 retail stores closed
Retail sales data released by the United States on May 15 showed that the monthly rate of retail sales in the United States in April this year was -16.4%, far lower than the expected -12%, marking the largest monthly decline since 1992. The situation of the US retail industry under the epidemic is worse than expected.
JCPenney, a 118-year-old department store in the United States, officially filed for bankruptcy on May 15 local time, becoming the fourth US department store giant to declare bankruptcy within a month. Affected by the current economic situation, three department stores including J.Crew, Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores have also declared bankruptcy. In addition to these large department stores, data from the Coresight retail store database shows that as of May 15, 2,294 retail stores in the United States have closed so far this year.