CE's 'Double Whammy'
By Steve Smith -- TWICE, 12/19/2005
The world of consumer electronics has a “double whammy” as the year draws to a close. Not only is it the busiest time of year for retailers due to the holiday selling season, those same retailers, as well as manufacturers, distributors and the rest of the trade, are busy preparing for the biggest industry event of the year, International CES.
This year the show will begin earlier than anyone can remember, Thursday, Jan. 5, which means that more than a few exhibitors and CEA employees (CEA produces CES) will be traveling to Las Vegas on New Year's Day or earlier.
Many don't mind. Why? They love the business. In what other industry can you get involved with technology products and services that can inform, educate and entertain the public while making a few bucks along the way? (Some may say too few bucks, but that's a subject for another day.)
As we end one year and prepare for CES to begin one anew, many of you should feel lucky that you can make a living at this competitive, sometimes cut-throat, industry. During a year marked by war, horrendous natural disasters, and dramatically higher energy costs, consumers continue to march out to retail stores (or point and click online) and to buy a staggering amount of CE products.
The front page story by Alan Wolf in today's edition indicates how popular the industry's products are. The story shows the top 10 product searches on Yahoo! Shopping for the week of Nov. 20-26, which includes Black Friday Nov. 25. All 10 were CE related and the largest category of the industry, HDTV, was not even on the list.
Now as Alan's story relates, and others have reported, there continues to be aggressive price promotions going on, there have been plenty of product shortages, resulting in many consumers being disgruntled about going to a store for a specific, rock-bottom priced product advertised and it not being there. Price promotions without enough products to meet demand and shortages of hot products with full markup have not dampened consumer enthusiasm.
In fact, by the time all of us get to Las Vegas for CES, the entire story of the holiday selling season will not have ended. The season will be getting its second wind from gift cards that have become an ever-greater part of the retail mix. As many of you know, January has become the second-best month for CE retailers during the year, due to these gift cards. And of course the other popular gift to high school and college age kids — “cash in a card” — always helps retailers too.
So, when in Vegas for CES, if you see retailers scrambling around from supplier to supplier, they aren't necessarily looking for early shipments of 2006 products. They are probably trying to get manufacturers to send more 2005 SKUs to their stores to meet consumer demand for the other holiday season, January.
And one final publishing note. Our next issue will be Jan. 5, 2006, the same day as the first day of International CES. If you are attending the show, you can pick up a copy in Las Vegas, along with the TWICE CES Official Daily, which will be published there Jan. 5-8. In the meantime, be sure to visit www.TWICE.com to keep up with the latest news.
Have a happy, healthy and safe holiday season, and we'll see you at CES.
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