Holiday Shopping: Cyber Monday Keeps Consumers Shopping from Home

John Lagerling, Mercari US CEO, tells Yahoo Finance Live consumers are turning to reselling items during the pandemic in an effort to have more cash this holiday season.

Video transcript

- It is Cyber Monday. We are seeing enormous shopping online. And, Adam, of course, we saw it all last week, too. Many people were shopping on Thanksgiving Day. We had big data from Adobe coming out. I want to bring in John Lagerling right now. He is the CEO for the US arm of Mercari. Now, Mercari-- I don't know, you're probably going to correct me, but I've been on the website-- it's a little bit like an eBay in there. It's a resale, but it's not so much an auction. And I want to know what you guys are seeing right now in terms of what people are buying, what people are doing. Because the heyday of eBay, in my Christmas experience, is when you need to get your hands on something that are not in any stores. And I feel like we're not seeing, like, a run on one item. Oh, there you are, John.

JOHN LAGERLING: There we go. I thought I was swapped out for someone more skilled than me for a second there.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm glad I still have my job. I hope you can hear me well.

- Good, we've got you. Yeah, like, there's no Tickle Me Elmo this year. So, like, resale, you'd think, is like the one thing everyone needs. And, yes, I just dated myself with that reference. But is there an item that I'm missing that's driving people to you?

JOHN LAGERLING: Not really. I think people are still sticking with what will entertain them when they're forced to stay at home. So we still see a lot of interest for video games, and also home decor. So decorative pillows, artwork, posters, collectibles. Anything that you can do to kind of make your shelter-at-home experience more cozy seems to be still a big deal.

- I'm trying to think of something about decorative pillows. Because there's an ad on TV right now where the couch has way too many pillows, and I always chuck at that. Because it seems like that's the regrettable purchase everyone makes. Like, ah, you've got too much stuff here. Is this all sustainable? We have huge amounts of money for people fortunate enough to have gotten a paycheck during this pandemic. Big savings. But there's a vaccine coming. Our world is going to come back. Are we going to see these kinds of big increases going forward, say, next holiday season?

JOHN LAGERLING: I do think that what has happened with COVID-19 is that people have been forced to look at what can be done online. And now that they've found the convenience and, honestly, venues that weren't even available through retail-- Like, you can't go to a retail shop easily and sell something and some of your money back. I mean, you can return items. But a lot of people store new items they bought and never used at home. And there hasn't really been a good channel for that. So I think, for me, who's in the resale business, that's probably here to stay. Even for e-commerce, just straight out, I think the convenience that people feel of really getting the item and getting the item at a very good price, it's probably going to continue to be hard for retail to compete with what people now have discovered, similar to how people have realized that we can actually work from home and still get stuff done without meeting in person. So there are a lot of things where I don't think we can put the genie back into the bottle.

- For Mercari, how many people are just regular people that are selling? Because sometimes I think, like, with eBay, or even with Poshmark, when it started, it was just more peer to peer. But then people realized they can make money. And then there's, like, these cottage industries that start up. And, I don't know, negotiating with them or what they have to offer is kind of different than just dealing with the one person. What are you finding is your vendor, your seller? Who are they?

JOHN LAGERLING: So seller, if I'm going to you define her a little more specifically, it's typically, again, on average, female. Not there are one or two somewhere in America. This is not a coastal phenomena. It's not a Midwest phenomena. We've really seen, all over the country, that especially mothers with families and kids have a lot of items coming into the household and also the need of getting household items out that aren't useful anymore or that ended up not being used. So that trend has continued. That has not seen a change. What I would say is that we have done some surveying here, and we've seen that now it's about 46%, almost half of American consumers, have considered or are already selling things on these marketplaces that are consumer-powered. And I think that's an absolutely new trend that we've seen, obviously more than a doubling of that level of activity. We now have millions of sellers. And, yes, we have some very high-volume professional sellers. But there are a lot of regular folks out there that have discovered how easy it is to sell online, and especially for marketplaces like Mercari, where you don't have to meet up, but everything ships.

- I'm glad you talked about people getting rid of stuff that's just cluttering up the house, because trading cards are a hot item, and Pokémon cards. I can't think of anything that would be clutter more so than Pokémon cards. And yet, big seller on the site, right?

JOHN LAGERLING: Well, maybe mentally cluttering, right? Because I think items are not just their physical space. They're also, kind of, their emotional space, or even your guilt space. Sometimes you ended up buying something that you didn't go and use, or you used it and you're done with it. You already, you know, beat your friends at that Pokémon game. It's time to trade in for something else. And Pokémond cards have actually, as a growth category, year on year, compared to 2019, has grown by 554% on Mercari, which is really not being beat by anything. It's really the number one category. Previous years, Funko POP!'s, which are these collectable little figures, were a huge category. Still growing. But I think the five to six X of Pokemón is quite astronomical.

- Well, I guess we know we're not going to get Adam those for Christmas.

[LAUGHTER]

JOHN LAGERLING: No Pokémon cards for you, Adam.

[LAUGHTER]

- No, no, no.

- No Pokémon. Forget it.

- Used Studebaker parts, I'll take.

JOHN LAGERLING: Well, at least you know where to get them.

- John Lagerling is Mercari US CEO, talking to us about how they're doing this holiday season. Thanks so much.

JOHN LAGERLING: Thank you so much. Have a fun Cyber Monday for everyone. Take care.