This holiday shopping season is anticipated to be one of the biggest yet for online sales – an anticipated 11% year-over-year growth that’s estimated to reach $96.1 billion.
In fact, 66% of Americans did some last-minute shopping this past weekend – deemed Super Saturday because it’s the last full Saturday to shop before Christmas.
What does all of this mean if you’re a retailer? (Or, what if your business only briefly participates in selling to consumers during the holiday season?) If your digital commerce platform can’t handle the holiday rush, you’re in for a long, cold winter.
Hess Corporation, one of the world’s largest independent energy companies, doesn’t fall into the typical category of B2C eCommerce. However, the brand has upheld a half-century long holiday tradition with sales of its collectible Hess toy trucks.
It all began in the early 1960s when Leon Hess opened the first Hess-branded gas/service station. Because he grew up during the Depression, he wanted to offer families a fun, high-quality, and affordable toy for the holidays as a goodwill gesture to customers. 
Fast-forward to 2016, and the truck is consistently among the largest-selling toy in the U.S. during the holidays. This year Hess has transitioned from selling them through its gas stations to now selling them exclusively online.
Because scalability and stability are crucial for handling high-traffic volumes and processing hundreds of orders per minute, Hess engaged us to enhance and manage its Magento eCommerce site that exclusively sells these in-demand toys.
When the new eCommerce site launched, Hess saw a record level of first-day orders that exceeded its sales projections by 2X.
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