Was Your Online Holiday Shopping Experience a Disaster in 2020?

A lot happened in 2020. A lot.

We won't bore you with all the details of what happened. Unless you've been fortunate enough to be living under a rock somewhere, you know a lot happened.

For man online retailers, it was an insane time. At Broquet, we shared that experience! We did our best to keep up with the demand, but wow, it was a lot of late nights and early mornings!

You weren't alone for the 2020 online shopping experience

Cyber Monday hit hit 100 billion dollars in 2020

It’s should be no surprise the Coronavirus pandemic caused a lot of issues. Every step of the process during the 2020 holiday season was affected by the pandemic. Shopping trends greatly shifted towards online sales last year, making it difficult for many eCommerce stores.

It was a crazy record year for internet sales. One of the biggest hurdles we faced with the 2020 holiday season was the large influx of orders over previous years. Cyber Monday reached $100,000,000,000 for the first time ever!

As we plan out the rest of our year, we thought we’d share our story with the 2020 holiday season. Hopefully this behind the scenes look at Broquet will help you plan out your 2021 holiday season!

It Began with Product Shortages

With holiday shopping growing over 30% online from 2019, it was bound to happen – many companies ran out of products to ship. It was no different story at Broquet.

It didn’t help that we were hit big time almost overnight shortly after Cyber Monday!

Our suppliers’ product shortages came, and the scramble to find new products to replace them was real. Hours and hours scouring the internet and on the phone with so much hope to talk to someone who could help us serve our customers happened seven days a week.

At times, product would arrive and within an hour, be in Broquet crates ready to be sent out to our customers. If you think the packaging straw gets all over the place, you should’ve seen our warehouse floors before clean up each night!

product shortages during 2020 online shopping holidays

We also explored our local area to find products on shelves to replace what we couldn’t get in time from our suppliers. Every avenue of approach was considered on stuffing the Broquets.

Then They Couldn’t Produce Crates Fast Enough!

Our American Pine crates are very popular. This did not change during the 2020 holiday season.

Wanting to live up to the real men we create Broquets for, we stepped up to the challenge.

Our crate suppliers couldn’t make crates fast enough. They need a good amount of lead time to produce the crates and get them shipped safely to us. Had we been psychic and known what kind of 2020 holiday season we were going to have, we definitely would’ve stocked up on crates! Hindsight is 20/20!

A serious combination went down – we found a carpenter to make some crates for us, but we realized he was only one man. We rolled up our sleeves and decided to put on our temporary carpenter hats.

One of our regular warehouse employees spent almost every hour from December 4th to December 22nd hauling, cutting, gluing, and nailing crates together. Of course, he had other sets of hands assisting him along the way.

This lead to many early mornings and late nights (and plenty of slivers!) through December 2020, but we wanted to get the job done right by our gift givers.

Countless Postponed Deliveries

I gave it to my Hubby as a Christmas present and he was in heaven!!! I added a bottle of four roses single barrel bourbon and he is a happy camper!! Highly recommended

Silvia - Comments like these made the chaos worth it!

It is estimated that upto 14,500 postal employees were under quarantine. That's crazy, isn't it!?

Once our Broquets left our warehouse, they ran into another issue – mail carriers were overwhelmed. They were hit hard by the online sales as well as the distribution of the COVID vaccine started in mid-December. Many customers were contacting us to see if there was anything we could do about it. Unfortunately, once the package leaves the warehouse, we have no control over it.

It was made especially hard because the USPS’s tracking system was on the fritz. The huge increase of packages and the recipients checking upon those packages was the cause.

Many of our customers’ had no idea where their packages were or when they would arrive to their destinations. It was difficult on us as well– all the extra hours put in, only to have the package delayed by many days.

Trust us, we aren’t laying the blame on the mail carriers. We understand that is was a very different and much busier year than most.

Our Tip: Be Ready for 2021

This post’s intention is not to make excuses for anything that happened in the 2020 holiday season. We want you to be more prepared.

We really are hoping for a smooth holiday season this year, but after what we saw last year, we want to take as many precautionary steps as possible.

We’d also like to tell you about one service we offer at Broquet - scheduled delivery.

When you go to purchase your Broquet, the Delivery Date box allows you to chose a delivery date for up to 12 months out. You can get your shopping done today for the holiday season and not have to worry about any potential issues that may flare up!

We also suggest putting the delivery date a few days early as well, just to be safe.

This also helps us out in planning what we need to order to make sure we are well stocked for the holiday season.

The good news is that you can use the Delivery Scheduler for any holiday, event, or any day! Need a gift for a birthday in two months? Browse our Broquet selection and take care of that task today!

You can also sign up for our Gift Giving Newsletter for tips on gift giving. You’ll get tips for year-round gift giving. Become a Gift Giving Guru by combining our tips with our scheduler and make gift giving look too easy!