Mighty Ape hopeful for silly season retail spend-up

Tuesday, 18 November 2025

Mighty Ape’s new managing director Robert McEwan says the online retailer has more hands on deck to meet an expected surge in demand during the busy season.

While the latest electronic card transaction data shows spending on discretionary goods fell in October when compared with the same time last year, Mighty Ape is hopeful this month will be when consumers open their wallets again to kick off the typical Christmas shopping splurge.

Mighty Ape has spent most of the year preparing for Black Friday and an expected upswing in sales through this month and next, including hiring an additional 60 staff to pick and pack orders.

McEwan, who moved from general manager of operations and customer service at Mighty Ape to managing director in February, told The Post the Kogan.com-owned shopping website had set itself the goal of selling more goods this year than it had this time last year.

Over November and December it dispatches 500,000 orders, and on its busiest day last year it racked up between 15,000-20,000 orders.

McEwan said it was a fun time of year to be inside the retailer’s warehouse in Silverdale, north of Auckland, and sales had started increasing after the company kicked off its Black Friday promotions early.

“We're already seeing an uptick, quite an uptick actually, in sales over this week,” McEwan said.

The Black Friday weekend or the week before Christmas were typically its busiest days of the year for orders, like many other retailers.

“It's no secret our economy is doing it a bit tough, and in particular the retail sector. Throughout this cost of living crisis, we have seen average order values go down, however, we are starting to see that turn now. We're starting to see retail sales pick up, and we're pretty confident that over November and December we can build on last year's sales.”

In a cost of living crisis, retailers had to buy better and offer better prices to get consumers to part with their money, he said.

In the 2024 financial year, Mighty Ape made gross sales of $137 million, a 7% decline on the previous year, which it attributed to “an intentional transitional period” as the business completed a re-platforming of its website.

But McEwan said the brand had invested a lot in its operational capacity to make sure it was faster and more efficient this year - and could therefore can keep prices even sharper and lower, boosting volume, and ultimately, sales.

“We've also done a lot of work on our range, and that's included making sure that what is in stock is hot product that people want, but also making millions of more products available to be shipped directly from our suppliers. We've put a lot of effort and over the last year to make sure that we've expanded our range, and are bringing value and extensive product coverage to our customers.”

Books, games and toys, electronics and appliances were Mighty Ape’s biggest sellers among its almost 6 million-product offering.

Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said she believed the Christmas spending season would start a little later this year, as it had done last year.

She said retail remained squeezed, and many businesses had been waiting to see an improvement in the economy.

“We are still seeing liquidations and closures across the sector, although some regional areas are showing signs of improved trading on the back of strong dairy prices. We remain hopeful that the Reserve Bank’s recent OCR cut to 2.5% signals potential relief ahead. However, retailers are not noticing any immediate change in consumer spending.”