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E-tailers closing for season
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December 22, 1999: 8:18 p.m. ET
As real-world stores face last-minute shoppers, e-tailers plan for next year
By Rob Lenihan
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Bill Bass won’t rest easy until the clock strikes 12.
Bass, senior vice president of e-commerce at Lands’ End Inc. (LE), the No.1 online apparel seller, is going to wait until the midnight hour Wednesday to relax because that’s the deadline for Internet shoppers to buy something on the Dodgeville, Wis.-based company’s Web site and still have it arrive in time for Christmas.
"There’s still time for some disaster to happen,” Bass said Wednesday afternoon.
Disaster can come in many forms for a Web retailer, from crashed sites to fulfillment snafus, and in a world of increasingly unforgiving Net consumers, excuses don’t count for much.
In the end, some will receive glad tidings and some will be crying in their eggnog. Bass is satisfied because of something he doesn’t have to do.
"We’re not sitting here making excuses,” he said, "that’s what I’m happiest about.”
A Merry little Christmas?
This is pretty much the end of the online shopping season. While their bricks and mortar counterparts are dealing with throngs of last-minute shoppers, e-tailers are doing the math for Xmas ’99 and looking to next year.
Fulfillment—actually delivering the goods to the customers—was a major issue for the online retailers.
"I think it’s safe to say this was the year e-commerce went mass-market,” said Srikant Srinivasan, founder and chief executive officer of KBkids.com. "”I’m really very encouraged about what this Christmas holds for the future. There were some bumps in the road...but the future of e-commerce is alive and well.”
For Srinivasan, autonomy is the best friend of the clicks and mortars company. Having the backing of KayBee Toys helped the site nail down some of the hot toys that were so scarce this year, but being a separate entity helped keep the site nimble.
"Autonomy breeds speed,” he said. "And speed is necessary to participate on the Internet.”
"The future of e-commerce is alive and well.”
---Srikant Srinivasan, KBkids.com
Bill Curry, spokesman for Amazon.com (AMZN), said the low unemployment rate made it very hard to find seasonal help.
"We overcame that by clearing out our offices and directing people to distribution and other areas,” he said.
The extra bodies were put to good use. Amazon had 6.2 million customers at the end of 1998 and 13 million going into Christmas this year.
"We saw a significant increase in the number of woman who planned to do their shopping on the net,” Curry said. "As the Internet moves into the mainstream, we see a lot more women doing their holiday shopping online.”
Jim Sluzewski, spokesman for Federated Department Stores Inc.’s (FD) macys.com, said the company is planning a whole series of enhancements for the site in 2000.
"It’s a process of continuing improvement,” he said.
Among other items, Sluzewski said customers wanted to see products from all angles, which means improving and expanding the site’s zoom technology.
And people also wanted to track their orders—not just during the shipping process, but also while their packages were in the macy.com system. So next year, the site will introduce real-time order tracking.
And to all a good night?
This was the year dot.com advertising took over the TV and radio waves. Some e-tailers believe the scene will be quite different next year.
"There’s a lot of dot.com slaves that ended up in the ditch because they didn’t have the back-end capabilities,” said Bass of Land’s End. "A lot of them put a lot effort into advertising and not enough into fulfillment.”
Bass is giving this year’s online shopping experience mixed reviews, largely due to the fulfillment problems some sites experienced.
"A lot of the start-ups didn’t go through last Christmas,” he said. "Selling online is so competitive, you’re one click away from another company selling the same or similar product.”
For Christmas 2000, Bass sees a greater emphasis on the global experience as other countries get more online shopping experience. And there will be fewer companies.
"There won’t be as many players as there were last year,” he said. "There won’t be this dot.com frenzy next year.”
Srinivasan held a similar viewpoint, seeing consolidation in the future for a lot of the pure players.
And now it’s time to hunker down and figure out what to do next year.
"There isn’t much rest for us weary soldiers,” Srinivasan said. 
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