As online shopping continues to break records, with some retail chains reporting Internet sales gains of up to 45 percent over last year, Marshall Field’s is sitting out the party.
The 62-store chain has been without an online shopping site since its purchase in July by St. Louis-based May Department Stores Co. and won’t have one until this spring.
Going dark on the Web could cost the company more than $100 million, based on typical Internet retail sales figures.
For months, visitors to the shopping link on www.fields.com have been greeted by an announcement that the company is “building the ultimate Web site for the ultimate department store.”
“We know this is an important offering,” Field’s spokeswoman Jennifer McNamara said. “We’re in the process of rebuilding it. We’re going in stages, building it as fast as we can.”
Gift-card sales recently were added to the site, she said, along with online bill payments. Field’s ads and some direct-mail pieces can be viewed online, but customers must use a toll-free phone number to order.
Field’s could be leaving millions of dollars on the table by being offline. According to Shop.org, an industry-sponsored Web site, the average U.S. retailer posted about 6.6 percent of its sales online in 2004.
For Field’s, with annual sales of about $2.6 billion, that translates into a loss of more than $100 million in potential sales.
In addition to losing sales, Field’s could lose customers who find other places to shop, said Scott Litman, a Minneapolis marketing consultant.
“What happens to the shopper that at one point relied on the site?” Litman said. “If I’m that shopper, I’m going to go somewhere else.”
