E-Commerce Is Critical for Post COVID-19 Athletic and Outdoor Health — Here’s Why

The coronavirus crisis is accelerating trends already present in the marketplace, and perhaps none is greater than people’s demand to shop online. This shift is particularly important to the athletic and outdoor industries. “We are going to continue to see an acceleration in e-commerce penetration [post COVID-19],” The NPD Group senior sports industry adviser Matt Powell said during yesterday’s Sports & Fitness Industry Association webinar. “Going into the pandemic we said we thought the e-commerce portion of athletic footwear would grow from 32% to 50% in five to 10 years. I think we cut that time frame in half.” During the SFIA “Monitoring the Impact of COVID-19 and the Road to Recovery” webinar, Powell stated the DTC footwear business — which includes e-commerce as well as factory outlets and full-price brand stores — for the first five months of the year has been a relative bright spot despite the challenges the industry was facing. According to NPD data, DTC was only down 12% for the year as of May compared to the steeper 20% decline in all other channels. As for brands in the athletic space, DTC was a major part of their overall sales for the period including Nike (24%), Adidas (31%)

Follow Footwear News on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

from Footwear NewsFootwear News https://ift.tt/3eTxwDj