Street Fight’s October Theme: Home for the Holidays

This post is the latest in our “Home for the Holidays” series. It will be an editorial focus for the month of October, and you can see the rest of the series here. 

Entering Q4 means many things, but to us it points to the media and commerce world’s annual culmination. That’s right — in this time warp of a year, we’re entering the holidays. Considering the oddities of 2020, what will this year’s holiday season look like? We know for sure it will not be normal.

Answering that question will be Street Fight’s October editorial focus. Branded with the cheeky title “Home for the Holidays,” (title credit: Damian Rollison), this month’s focus will be defining the holiday shopping dynamics of a socially distanced and sheltered-in-place world. What will be different?

For example, one burning question is what Black Friday will look like this year. Though we don’t wish to disparage offline retail sales, perhaps this will be one of the pandemic’s silver linings in rethinking a sometimes-dangerous and irrational shopping holiday. What are the ways we can optimize Black Friday?

On the bright side, the continuing trend of e-commerce growth could cause a record-setting Cyber Monday. But will the growth in those online sales offset the dip in physical retail spending? If the last six months are any indication, the answer is likely no, partly due to recessionary consumer spending.

So in this strained environment, innovation will come to the fore. Retail survivors will get creative with distancing-friendly fulfillment. We’ve already seen a glimpse of this principle in Target and Walmart’s blowout Q2 earnings, which were mostly a function of their e-commerce and curbside pickup adoption.

Throughout the month, we’ll examine these and other strategic differentiators. As background, and as frequent Street Fight readers know, we have an overarching theme each month. Though we continue to reactively cover news from the local commerce world, these themes add a proactive framework.

These themes collectively characterize Street Fight’s editorial charter. Individually, they include everything from voice search to autonomous vehicles (see them all here). Some are ongoing staples, while others are time-anchored trends that dominate the Covid era. This month, it will be a bit of both.

So, lookout for the tag “Home for the Holidays.” We’ll label posts so you can discover them daily or actively browse them. Coverage will include our own daily reporting, deeper analytical dives from columnists, and a steady flow of contributions from business leaders developing first-hand insights.

Speaking of which, we’ll take this chance to remind you about our editorial contributor program. If you have unique perspective and insights, we’d love to hear from you. We’re prioritizing and fast-tracking any submissions that fall under our Future Finders column or any of the holiday angles cited above.

Reach out to us with suggestions for monthly themes, opportunities to contribute, and to amplify your brand messaging alongside this thematic coverage. On that note, we’re excited to also announce that we’ve launched the latest version of our media kit. Check it out, and come be part of the narrative.