ATLANTA — It’s Cyber Monday and this year, shoppers are expected to buy $12 billion of goods and gifts online, according to a CNBC report.
In addition to the online shopping orders on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, many local businesses in Atlanta spent Cyber Monday fulfilling orders.
“You are very thankful for the orders and it’s also a pinch me moment where you’re like, 'Wow,'” Founder and CEO of Shinery Brea Fullerton said.
Shinery is an Atlanta small business that creates a hand wash that cleans your jewelry. The business has landed on Oprah’s Favorite Things list for 2022 and 2023.
Fullerton said they’ve fulfilled thousands of orders over the last few days.
“We prep all year for Black Friday to Cyber Monday and this is like our Super Bowl for retail,” she said.
Shinery is one of 62 local businesses using Saltbox on the West Side, a shared warehouse to ship and receive their products. Saltbox was a very busy spot on Cyber Monday, with extra staff unloading deliveries, and packing products and delivery trucks coming and going.
Just a few warehouse suites away, Michael Gottfried, another small business owner and CEO of PCKL, was busy unloading boxes of pickleball equipment. He said they’ve been planning for this weekend since June.
“We don’t want to go out of stock. We also want to make sure it arrives in time,” said Gottfried.
These small business owners said the last few years have made them much more flexible and adaptive.
“We’ve ridden the COVID wave, we’ve ridden the inflation wave, the shipping wave, so all of those business forces that are hard to deal with,” said Fullerton.
It's also made them thankful for a busy shopping weekend and the year ahead.
“It’s the temperature of how our year is gonna be, kind of make or break season,” said Gottfried.
If you didn’t order gifts this weekend, keep in mind the cut-off date to make sure your gifts arrive on time for Christmas with USPS ground shipping is Dec 15.