VERO BEACH, Fla. — A Vero Beach gift shop owner is already looking ahead to the holiday season with plans to expand her business model.
Darcy Dunbar is the owner of Maison Beach which specializes is in ladies accessories, glassware, and personalized gifts.
She is celebrating 10 years in business, but for the first time Dunbar is offer a gift wrapping service for customers even if the gifts were purchased outside of her store.
“I have had demand for gift wrapping items that we didn’t sell,” said Dunbar. “We added it as a service.”
Dunbar wants to make the shopping experience as convenient as possible for her customers with hopes of boosting sales to meet her bottom line.
“While wrapping is always free for things that we sell, we can’t sell everything,” said Dunbar. “Of course, gift baskets are great too. Wine sales should be coming soon, fingers crossed.”
The National Retail Federation reports, the holiday season is critical for the retail industry and accounted for nearly 20 percent of annual retail sales in 2019 and in some categories even more.
According to Dr. Lawrence Burgee, professor of marketing at Palm Beach Atlantic University, e-commerce sales are expected to set records this holiday season.
“Hundreds of millions of people around the world use e-commerce,” said Dr. Burgee. “The industry is very stable and functional and many customers have fun in the process.”
With the increased growth of e-commerce, FedEx is anticipating an unprecedented holiday shipping season.
The delivery company announced plans to hire 70,000 workers to meet customer demand.
“Mobile Commerce is also maturing with more and more online sales occurring on smartphones,” said Dr. Burgee. “Mobile commerce will expand greatly over this decade.”
Dr. Burgee also reports many small and medium-sized companies have quickly become very proficient with the transition to e-commerce due the disruption of in-store shopping during the pandemic.