We recently launched a new product that examines trends of promotional activity within subsectors.
Highlights:
Footwear promotional volume continues to accelerate higher. 9 of the 13 tickers in our footwear index exhibited a “worsening” promotional trend last week with 12 of 14 worsening on a monthly basis.
Luxury Retail demand appears weak as significant promotional volume has worsened on a YoY rate of change basis at several major companies in our subsector index.
The Sporting Goods subsector has emerged as another addition to the worsening list. All 8 companies in this index have sent out substantially higher promotional volume in the most recent week compared to the prior year.
Outdoor Apparel promotions continue to stand out as significant promotion volume YoY growth for this subsector exceeded 100% in three consecutive weeks recently.
Demand doesn’t appear to be returning at home improvement retailers. Promotional volume is substantially higher at all 5 companies in our index compared to the prior year.
APRIL 20, 2023 Random Walk Email intelligence suggests management is responding to fading organic demand in home furnishings and home improvement with more aggressive pushed offers to their leads lists this spring
Home and home furnishing related names have been more aggressive in sending promotions to leads this April compared to last, with Wayfair (W) and Pottery Barn(WSM) as standouts on our slowing list. Each had more faster ramps year-over-year promotion growth in significant discounts.
Home improvement retailers Home Depot (HD) and Lowe’s (LOW) are dealing with declining demand in part by sending new and more frequent email promotions to leads. We also recently captured new spring holiday language unseen in prior years.
In terms of fastest growers of total email volumes Floor & Decor (FND) stands out. Total promotional volume is a good way to measure concerns from brands that do not discount such as Restoration Hardware(RH). As can be seen above, RH is sending more communications to leads, despite no significant discounts outside of the outlet.
Our updated promotional ensembles provide the most robust, quantitative and rigorous views of how brands are communicating with leads.
Our promotional ensemble identified the biggest outliers of the period from several weeks before Black Friday through Cyber Week for our investor partners.
Standouts with previously unseen promotions, largest risers in discount campaigns, or those with robust organic demand that were able to reduce email volumes include:
Our email intelligence systems have been capturing tracking and classifying emails from leading brand for nearly 7 years providing the most robust, quantitative insight into email promotional activity. i
The quickest and cheapest method for management to respond to demand inflections is to adjust its cadence and intensity of email discounts.
AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS (AEO) Both total promotional email volume and significant discounts nearly 30% lower than a year ago.
GAMESTOP (GME) Meteoric rise in BF related promotional activity with “$50 off x box” and “up to 60% off video games”.
HELLO FRESH (HLFF) Total promotional email volumes up nearly 300% driven by “$180 off Thanksgiving” and “get up to 70% off” discounts.
LOVESAC (LOVE) Steeper than year ago and higher volume significant discounts driven by “35% off Bundles”.
NIKE (NKE) Sequential and YoY declines in steep and significant discounts
VF CORP (VFC) Both North Face and Vans saw sharp rises in all categories of email promotions. Total inbox volumes, significant discounts, steep discounts and storewide promotions all rose to record highs.
contact us for to see the entire Holiday Promotional Outlier List
Within our universe of nearly 300 names, our email intelligence identified several brands relying on record setting promotions and discount to drive traffic both online and in stores. Compared with prior years, total promotional volume, total steep discounts, total significant discounts were all at least 100-200% higher than year ago levels.
Our systems alert investors to these situations which have often signaled dramatically reduced guidance.
Random Walk Email Intelligence has never identified more unusual promotional activity than over the past 30 days. In June alone our systems have captured nearly 100 never seen before campaigns as consumer preferences shift.
HOME FURNISHING PROMOTIONS ACCELERATE TO NEW HIGHS
BIG, LOVE, W, WSM
In home furnishings our data indicates COVID pulled forward, not just several quarters but year’s worth of demand. Now, with the backyard, garage space and wallets maxed out, consumers are shifting away from creating the perfect Instagram worthy at-home backyard oasis.
Random Walk Email Intelligence indicates record growth the discount campaigns in Q2 from Pottery Barn.
DEMAND FOR CASUAL ‘AT HOME’ FOOTWEAR FADING?
CROX, FL, SCVL
During COVID, Americans gobbled up footwear for the outdoors or comfort around the house casual footwear retailers benefitted and throttled back promotions. However, this summer with consumers more spartan due to gas prices and $20 hamburgers they don’t appear to need so many sandals.
Crocs and Crocs retailers such as Foot Locker and Shoe Carnival have been blasting an all-time high volume of Croc’s specific discounts.
GET OUTDOORS ON THE ROAD MEETS $6 GAS
CWH, WGO, YETI
Without COVID checks, a free pass from work, and with $6 gas it appears road trip RV, van and mega SUV trips could be stalling. Our email intelligence has tracked growth in promotional volumes for outdoor camping accessory related businesses such as Camping World, Winnebago, and Yeti.
Into summer camping season Camping World has blasted out an all-time high volume of significant and steep discounts.
Our data visualizations allow quick identification of outliers within a specific sector. Find out which brands are losing organic demand and responding with increased “push” discounting campaigns to their leads
> Email Intelligence successfully detected the collapse of one of the biggest FOMO driven manias in US history: “crypto trading”.
> Random Walk ensemble alerted investor partners to sharp deceleration in orders, new account “welcome” confirmations, as well as a higher deletion rate for new product offerings.
> Wall Street bankers and analysts, motivated to sell the management “narrative”, extrapolate unsustainable growth rates into the future, but RW data can help uncover inflections
In 2020 and into 2021 our data indicated strong, but likely transient growth in new “Welcome to Coinbase” email confirmations. This unsustainable growth was driven by a ‘Black Swan’ mosaic of factors: bored locked down Americans, unprecedented Uncle Sam stimulus checks, and social media FOMO pictures of teens in pajamas getting rich trading Crypto Kitties.
After lockdowns and free money ended in late 2021 our ensemble uncovered slowing in new customer confirmation emails, and we added COIN to our slowing list.
‘GENIUS’ SUPER BOWL QR AD GENERATES CLICKS NOT CUSTOMERS
Above: Super Bowl Ad fails to generate customers, but drove worthless clicks due to its nebulous nature
Several additional data driven trends revealed themselves earlier this year. The inability for a $14 million Super Bowl ad to attract new customers was apparent as our data detected no spike in new accounts. While the media focused on worthless “clicks” our data showed a lack of actual new customers. Management hubris led to equivocating marketing a crypto-trading platform with proven consumers products such as alcohol/beer, quick service restaurants, auto, apparel etc.
In March, our email intelligence indicated very high delete rates for new products marketed with email promotions such as Coinbase One, and Coinbase NFTs. With gas at $6 a gallon and $25 hamburgers and rising rates, consumers had lost interest, as they prioritized getting to work and feeding their families over possessing digital unicorn.
BITCOIN SPIKES, TRADING VOLUMES DON’T
The lack of interest in trading “cryptos” despite a spike in bitcoin after Putin invaded Ukraine showed in our data and confirmed the slowing trend.
AS BROADER EQUITY MARKETS CORRECT, CUSTOMER GROWTH ENDS
Once the high growth equity tech bubble began to collapse and consumers saw their 529 plans, 401ks, and brokerage accounts decline, they quickly shifted their preferences away from crypto trading.
Updated weekly, our industry leading email intelligence tracks consumers in near real-time. Identify trends and inflections before earnings, and ahead of the street.
Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) Our system uncovers steep discounts, increased promotional campaigns, revealingly tepid demand foretelling, reduced earnings, guidance.
Dicks Sporting Goods (DKS)Promotional ensemble captured reduced significant incentive emails, steep discounts, translating into continued robust revenue growth, improved margins.
Promotional Index Our first data product has launched providing the most robust and quantitative view of nearly 300 brands promotional cadence dating back 4 years.
While most “home” related retailers were reducing their promotional campaigns and email sending volumes due to strong demand and supply chain constraints BBBY’s was doing the opposite. For much of 2021 Bed Bath and Beyond crafted the narrative of a revamped, growing e-commerce platform and a turnaround with new in-house products. While management sold the turnaround tale, our email intelligence detected they were ramping up “push” email offers to all-time highs in the face of stalling organic demand. With a long history of blasting out never ending 20% off coupons, our systems tracked an increase in the maximum discount implied and more frequent pushing of the same offers to leads.
The Random Walk Promotional Ensemble enables investors to quickly compare email discount campaign cadence on weekly basis with prior periods. As seen below both total promotional emails as well as our significant incentives category have been tracking at higher levels than any period over the past 3 years.
For Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) our promotional ensemble revealed the opposite situation as Bed Bath. As demand for sporting goods and a return to youth team sports accelerated this summer, DKS dramatically reduced nearly every form of promotion. Our systems tracked a 65% reduction in incentive promotions.
In both BBBY and DKS. investors focused on proxying revenues with expensive transactional failed to capture the extent of the inflections.
BBBY missed revenues by 3% with revenue guidance just 2% below expectations. The explosive 300% growth in promotional activity provided a clearer picture of the dramatic decline in organic demand consistent with the 25% drop in share price that ensued.
For DKS, while revenues did blast by consensus, our ensemble correctly tracked higher merchandize margins translating to bottom line improvements with a blowout $2 earnings beat and a 25% increase in earnings guidance for the year.
The newly launched Random Walk promotional index data product provides the most robust quantitative view of promotional cadence available. Uncover demand changes as management responds to them weekly.
