Walmart Works to Increase Father’s Day Sales

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 13, 6:29AM EDT

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Only a handful of holidays give retailers a chance to pick up sales beyond those they make on regular days. While Christmas is at the top of the list, it includes Easter, Mother’s Day and the start of school. As the summer starts, the primary chance retailers have is Father’s Day, which falls on June 15 this year. The celebration is one of the few opportunities Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) will have to pick up extra mid-year revenue for its faltering U.S. business.

The National Retail Federation provided this estimate:

As the smallest of the American gift-giving holidays, Father’s Day is a blip on the retail sales radar compared to Christmas and Mother’s Day, but the sentimental importance of the occasion will never be overlooked by consumers. According to NRF’s 2014 Father’s Day Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, the average person will spend $113.80 on neckties, tools, electronics and other special gifts for dad, slightly down from $119.84 last year. Total spending for the holiday is expected to reach $12.5 billion.

The NRF forecasts that, while about two-thirds of fathers will only get a card, sales of clothing, appliances, home improvement goods and consumer electronics will benefit, as a third of Americans buy something more than a piece of paper in an envelope.

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As usual, Walmart is using both its physical stores and website as a means to bring in Father’s Day business. Walmart.com has set up an entire section devoted to the holiday. For very late shoppers, the world’s largest retailer cleverly offers late shopper gifts that include eGift cards and same-day pick up of photo gifts. And, although it is late in the shopping cycle, Walmart continues to offer a storehouse of consumer electronics, outdoor cooking, furniture, jewelry and clothing.

Among the very few gifts not available at Walmart.com are guns. People will have to go to Walmart stores to buy those.

Father’s Day — one of Walmart’s final chances to sharply boost sales in what it may find is a long, unpleasant summer if it cannot do better than it has in the past few quarters.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.