EP283 - Year End Review  It’s our final show of 2021! We recap the US Dept of Commerce November Advanced Retail Sales Data. We do a deep dive into the retail industries growth from 2019 through November 2021. In those 23 months, the retail industry grew 22%, historically fast growth. There were clear winners and losers. If you want to follow along on with all the data, here is a visual recap of retail growth 2020-2021. (PDF Download). We also highlight the six most important trends of 2021. Amazon fulfillment capacity growth (Amazon and Walmart become shipping companies) Social Media becomes the discovery channel for e-commerce (led by live-streaming) Ultrafast delivery services Amazon invents and starts to scale a grocery store (Amazon Fresh) with just walk out technology Retail Media Networks explode, led by Amazon’s $30B in ad sales. Retailers now compete with social media networks for eyeballs Apparel has shifted from designer led to consumer led, as evidenced by the meteoric rise of Shein We’re so very grateful to our audience, both for the time you have shared with us, and for generous opinions, feedback, and knowledge that many of you have shared. We wish you all the very best holidays and New Years, and look forward to seeing you in 2022! Episode 283 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, December 21st, 2021 http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 283 being recorded on Tuesday sept December twenty first twenty Twenty-One I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason how are the holidays treating you so far. Jason: [0:46] They are treating me really well it’s been super interesting what’s going on in our industry and getting ready to take the family to California to see my mom and brother. Scot: [0:59] Very fun California versus Chicago seems like a smart smart choice this time. Jason: [1:04] Yes early and my relationship with my wife we agreed that we would visit her Michigan in-laws and Thanksgiving and my California relatives in December seems weather prudent if nothing else. Scot: [1:16] Yeah smart I like your like you’re negotiating strategies so we are recording this here live on December 21st so we are in the very last tail end of holiday 21 and Jason you had some some interesting data that you had parse through that I thought we could start with it’s going to be largely kind of the November data but it’s kind of the best data we have, until we get into January and see how the holiday played out and then we’ll do a quick checkpoint on what you’re hearing from clients and then I think both of us wanted to kind of share our big stories for retail and e-commerce for 2021 so why don’t you kick us off with some data. Jason: [1:57] That sounds amazing so yeah so the data we are talking about is the US Department of Commerce data we get a an update every month so you know last week we got the, the update that includes November and in general November sales were up sixteen percent from November of twenty twenty so I always coach people that we should look at year-over-year not month over month so pretty healthy growth in 2021 from 2020 if you look at year-to-date so January through November we are up about 18% from 2020 and if you look at e-commerce we were up about 12 percent from November of 2020 so I you know I always put this data out on social media and I got a ton of, interesting responses this year on that data everyone’s like hey Jason why are you comparing to November of 2020 like we’re in the middle of the pandemic everything was all topsy-turvy like it’s like comparing,