FOOL PLATE SPECIAL
With a shake-up at Wal-Mart's online unit and a new approach at Target.com for the 2001 holiday shopping season, it seems pure e-commerce is having the last laugh. While it's true that over-hyped e-models like Pets.com and eToys eventually folded, those who managed to outlast their peers are in a unique position of experience in terms of Internet marketing and fulfillment. That's highly coveted knowledge.
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Can it be? Are the ghosts of Christmas' Past and Christmas' Future one and the same? After a solid 1999 holiday season -- and a 2000 in which market share was reclaimed by traditional retailers -- it seems as if the pure dot-com players are marching ahead for 2001. Yesterday afternoon, Jeanne Jackson announced that she would be stepping down as CEO of Walmart.com by the end of the year. She had come to Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) from Gap (NYSE: GPS), guiding the Banana Republic chain back when Gap was still relevant to growth investors. She came to apply bricks-and-mortar sensibility to the virtual retail space. In a year in which such fellow real-world retailers as Kmart (NYSE: KM) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) would join Wal-Mart in re-launching their online efforts, fueling a 30% spike in e-tail usage Web-wide, Walmart.com was out to prove it could be the same market-dominating force on the 'Net as it was on concrete. Wal-Mart tried, but its 370,000 average daily visitors for the 2000 shopping season paled in comparison with the 1.6 million unique visitors strolling through Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) every day. Wal-Mart is not backing out of the dot-com battle. And any notion that Jackson's resignation would mark a departure from applying old-school rules to a new school medium can be silenced: Her successor, John Fleming, comes from old line Target (NYSE: TGT) tutelage. But Target, on the other hand, is embracing the nouveau media ways. The discount department store chain is teaming up with Amazon the way Toys "R" Us (NYSE: TOY) did last year. While it's true that over-hyped e-models like Pets.com and eToys eventually folded, those who managed to outlast their peers are in a unique position of experience in terms of Internet marketing and fulfillment. That's highly coveted knowledge from the perspective of traditional store operators who have yet to prove they can reinvent themselves online. Even as retailers are bracing for a letdown in consumer spending this year, it should be another healthy year of growth for the online shops. With both the convenience of comparison shopping at home and the preponderance of bargains that can be found online, the Internet is decked as a beneficiary of a frugal Christmas. Rick Aristotle Munarriz will do most of his holiday shopping online this year. Why not? Right? Rick's stock holdings can be viewed online, as can the Fool's disclosure policy.
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