Imagine a $14.99 admission fee. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Better late than never? Maybe for many but it remains to be seen if that will work for HomeGoods.
The home furnishings brand that is part of the massive TJX off-price empire, finally launched its e-commerce business earlier this week, moving into the fastest growing part of the overall retail business with about as slow-a-moving effort as any big retailer has done since the online business became a mainstay of the industry over the past decade.
And while the site seems to have many of the bells and whistles required in today’s e-com marketplace it also seems to ignore perhaps the most fundamental tenet of the online shopper: the only thing they hate more than paying for shipping is paying a lot for shipping.
The HomeGoods site has a $119 threshold to hit the free shipping level, charging a steep $14.99 for any purchases that are smaller. Not only that but it charges that same $14.99 for returns, although returns are free when they are brought into a HomeGoods store.
In an age when many retailers do not charge at all for shipping or have minimums of under $50 to eliminate those charges – and Amazon Prime
For years TJX and its off-price brethren like Ross and Burlington have said e-commerce didn’t fit their “treasure hunt” style of shopping and coordinating inventory levels between online distribution centers and physical locations would be a logistics nightmare. Ross has no online operation at all and while Burlington had a small effort it shut it down in February of 2020…about three weeks before Covid hit and most physical off-price stores closed for weeks or months, deemed non-essential.
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HomeGoods itself has had a very limited online presence but shopping trips to the site often revealed out-of-stocks or very limited assortments. The new site does seem to have an extensive offering, complete with an “Idea Shop” where products are themed or otherwise featured. But it doesn’t seem to have any AI capabilities, such as smartphone-enabled view-in-room or rotated images, that have become standard on sites from other retailers like Wayfair
In speaking about the pending launch earlier this year, Ernie Herrman, CEO of TJX, told analysts, “We believe this is something our existing customers have been waiting for, and there’s another way for us to attract new shoppers.” No doubt about it, the off-price shopper is also an online shopper.
But even as the experience at a physical HomeGoods store can sometimes have its challenges – long lines, mixed up merchandise displays and maddeningly broken assortments – asking that shopper to pay excessive shipping rates, at least compared to competitors, may be sinking the treasure hunt process a little too deeply.
