It's the nation's biggest online shopping day of the year, and for many area retailers, Cyber Monday is also annually one of the largest sources of revenue
MARQUETTE -- A lot of U.P. businesses are now relying on their Websites to help generate sales year-round. But on Cyber Monday, those businesses expect Internet-based sales to significantly boost profits, rivaling purchases on any other day of the year.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that more than 106 million Americans will do the bulk of their shopping, online, Monday.
Marquette Backcountry Ski has been in business for a year, but only started selling skis a few weeks ago.
"Early sales right now are coming from wherever there's snow on the ground already, so we're having a lot of success in Vermont," says owner David Ollila. "But the majority of our sales are Internet-based, and we're getting traffic and sales coming from around the world."
Although their product is sold locally at a few Marquette sporting goods stores, the majority of the business comes from online.
That's also the case with Getz's.
On a typical Cyber Monday, Getz's online will do the same amount of business that is done in the entire month of May.
"We're not expecting a tremendous amount of growth, but what we're really, really happy with internally is we're much better prepared to handle this type of business," says John Spigarelli, V.P. of Marketing and e-Commerce for Getz's.
About 65 percent of Getz's sales come from the Website. This is traditionally the biggest sales day throughout the entire year.
"Our business really peaked on Black Friday in the evening, so what we noticed as a kind of generalized fact that people are out early shopping, spent a little time with family, rested and then went online to find the stuff they couldn't find in stores," Spigarelli adds.
Both of these businesses say that while they did offer certain special deals on their Websites for Cyber Monday, their online sales should remain fairly steady regardless.
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