by Jonathon Allen ,Wealth Advisor
Jonathon@parkswm.com
Ridgewood NJ,Staples ran a fantastic back-to-school commercial in 1996. Let’s jump right over the fact that this makes this commercial 22 years old and look instead at the trends in buying and spending as Americans begin to send their children back to school over these next several weeks.
The consultancy firm Deloitte publishes their annual Back to School (B2S) Survey tracking the spending and trends that drive the second biggest shopping season of the year. To keep this in perspective however, Americans spent $935.6B during the 2017 Christmas season[i] compared to the expected $27.6B we expect to spend to get our children back into the classrooms this year. A distant second, but second nonetheless!
Would you have guessed that we will be sending 54 million children to school this year, grades K-12 across the country?[ii] B2S shopping season touches one-quarter of US households–that’s 29 million households with school-aged children with the average household spend reaching $510 for school clothes and supplies.
It may come as a surprise that in-store spending still trumps online shopping, and by a considerable amount. It is expected that 57% of B2S shopping will take place in-store compared to 23% online. The mass merchants continue dominate sales across all categories, with the majority of our spending across clothing, electronics and school supplies occurring within their stores.
It is hard to believe summer is already winding down and we hope that you are all enjoying the last few weeks at a slower pace. We would love to hear your plans for the remainder of the season and in to the Labor Day weekend so please email us with your stories and photos! We wish all of you sending kids or grandkids back to school a wonderful first day and a successful year!