What: Despite splitting its e-commerce and store operations into separate businesses, Saks is delivering a "frictionless" shopping experience, Saks CEO Marc Metrick tells vendors.

Why it is important: Saks’ CEO addressed industry curiosity on how splitting e-commerce and stores is working out. “Metrick wrote: “This model works as reinforced by key stats: 44% of online returns were made in stores and 21% of online orders were fulfilled by stores.”

For the third quarter ended 30 October, “On a gross merchandise value basis, online sales increased 56% over 2020 and 84% over 2019, driven by higher site traffic, sales conversion and inventory,” Metrick wrote. “Traffic was up 32% [compared] to 2020 and 88% to 2019, and new customer counts grew by 54% to 2020 and 122% to 2019./nbsp]

At the Saks stores, comparable sales on a gross merchandising value basis were up by 30% to 2020 and nearly 24% over 2019, Metrick reported.

During the first three weeks of November leading up to and around Thanksgiving, there’s been “outsized” performances in outerwear, women’s shoes, handbags and holiday gift sets. “On Black Friday, we set record highs for traffic, customers, volume and transactions, which proved to be our largest demand day ever, up over 50% to 2020 and more than double to 2019,” Metrick wrote.

At the stores, he said comp sales were up more than 50% to 2020 and high single digits to 2019 for Black Friday, driven by men’s wear, fragrance, women’s shoes and jewelry.

Saks’ Update to Vendors_ Strong Q3 Followed by Record Black Friday