Can 'Free Shipping Day' Help Your Retail Shop?

The first, supposedly annual, Free Shipping Day, is Thursday, Dec. 18, in which participating merchants offer free shipping with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve. Among the Bloomingdale's and Crate & Barrels on the Free Shipping Day Web site are lesser-known shops as well. Maybe yours could benefit from exposure with the big guys.The inaugural Free Shipping Day on Thursday is meant to be the first of an annual event that rewards procrastinators -- people like me who wait until the last minute to shop for holiday gifts.

And while it's marketed to shoppers, Free Shipping Day also benefits the merchants -- at last check, about 100 and expected to hit 250 -- since it's free to participate and get your logo on the Free Shipping Day site that links to your own Web site.

Despite the recession, sales this holiday season are up, so the theory that Luke Knowles, founder of FreeShipping.org, has about last-minute shoppers may very well mean even higher profits for retailers. "We are a nation of procrastinators, so I think that Free Shipping Day will become a popular annual event," Knowles said in a statement.

Retailers are listed on the Free Shipping Day site in alphabetical order, so no one company is given the spotlight over another. I do wonder, however, which shopper is going to click on an unknown logo whose specialty isn't spelled out in the company name. For example, even though I've never heard of Heels.com, I can guess it's a shoe store, especially because there is a stiletto in the logo. But Shanrene? Never heard of it, and I can't tell what it is without clicking on the logo (FYI: It's a personalized-jewelry store). And if I'm scrambling to finish up my last-minute shopping in one day, I doubt I'm going to take the time to browse new sites.

Yet while the smaller shops might get lost among Wal-Mart, Game Stop, and Ralph Lauren, it is free to get your logo onto the site, and there's even a Toolkit where you can download a countdown widget and learn how else to promote your store's participation in Free Shipping Day. And in this economic crisis, who is going to argue with free?

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