When shoppers walk into JAM Paper, they can choose from hundreds of holiday bows, rolls of wrapping paper and gift bags, in addition to thousands of everyday stationery items. Yet the store will account for just 2 percent of the company’s business this year.
JAM Paper now gets so much of its revenue online that the company has scaled back from five stores to a single Manhattan location, owner Andrew Jacobs says.
“The second we launched the website in 2007, we became national,” Jacobs says. He estimates that online sales will be up 30 percent this year, while the store located near the East Village neighborhood is likely to have just an incremental increase.
Some small and independent retailers feeling the impact of the growing preference for online shopping have adapted by focusing more on their web business, including diverting more advertising dollars to those areas. Online and mail order sales nationwide rose 11 percent in October from a year earlier, compared with less than 2 percent growth in overall retail sales, the latest Commerce Department figures show.
There’s room for both types of retailing, but the increasing competition means store owners must be able to meet customers’ demands for the right merchandise, convenience, good service and an enjoyable experience whether it’s in a store or on a website, says Bob Phibbs, CEO of The Retail Doctor, a consulting company based in Coxsackie, New York.
“No channel you want to sell in is going to be easy,” Phibbs says.
Retailers also must make sure both their stores and websites can help bring sales in for each other. Jacobs, with an eye to that necessity, says he’s not planning to close the remaining JAM Paper location.
“I almost look at my retail store as billboard advertising,” he says. Some customers come into the store, buy a number of…