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ShopToIt

Media Coverage

Calgary Herald, December 26, 2006.

Internet has its own Boxing Day blowout: Huge

online sale won't keep many from the malls

Byline Jamie Komarnicki

As bargain hunters waded into the elbows-up, survival-of-the-fittest swarm of shoppers today, others got an early jump on the Boxing Day sales from the comfort of home.

As of 10 p.m. Monday, Calgary-based company ShopToIt.ca launched what they call the biggest Boxing Day sale in Canadian history.

Online shoppers can surf the site that features products from 200 Canadian retailers, such as La Senza, Home Depot, Sears, Mountain Equipment Co-op and Chapters-Indigo, said company president Clark Johannson on Monday.

Johannson expects about 50,000 products will be available through the website.

Consumers might take a while to warm to the idea of shopping sprees that are just a click away, though.

Last year, Canadians used the Internet to order just over $7.9 billion worth of goods and services for personal or household consumption, according to the Statistics Canada 2005 Canadian Internet Use Survey.

But the value of those online orders is still just a small fraction of the $762 billion Canadian consumers spent on goods and services for personal use last year.

"I've never thought about it until right now," said Lauren Penney on Monday. She planned on meeting a friend at the mall at 7:30 a.m. today, and relished the idea of battling crowds for great deals. "(Boxing Day shopping) is not as bad as what people make it out to be."

Todd Penney said online shopping might be useful for big-ticket items the couple is searching for, such as computer monitors.

"That might be worthwhile rather than driving all over the place."

Others didn't trust computers to handle the onslaught of Dec. 26 shopping.

"That's when the computer crashes, the website won't load. It kind of paralyzes it. We don't want that to happen," said Rohit, 28, who didn't give his last name.

In Calgary from Toronto visiting family for Christmas, he and his siblings brought extra suitcases to transport the expected Boxing Day retail haul. "We're going to strategize. We're going to go home (Monday night) and go through what stores to hit first. That's what Boxing Day is all about."

Smart shoppers will take advantage of the website as a research tool for web-to-store searches, pricing out online what they'd like, then hunting for the bargains at the actual stores, said Johannson.

"The biggest advantage is we kind of give them a chance to comparison shop," he said.

"This is a way to check before you get into a lineup. I think every year it's going to become bigger and bigger for online. It can really make your Boxing Day buying a little less frantic."

Reprinted from Calgary Herald
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