Department stores came into the holiday season with high hopes, particularly as initial online Thanksgiving weekend numbers indicated that sales would be plentiful. However, recent holiday sales reports from Macy’s and Kohl’s reveal that though their expectations were great, the reality was anything but. However, one major retailer, Target, actually surpassed expectations. Macy’s saw shares drop as much as 19% on Jan. 10, after the retailer unveiled November-to-December same-store sales only increased 1.1%, with a lull occurring in the mid-December period. CEO Jeff Gennette said holiday sales disappointed in sportswear, sleepwear, jewelry and cosmetics, and Macy’s now expects no net sales growth for fiscal 2018, scaling back initial projections of 0.3% to 0.7% growth. The company also dialed back its earnings per share range, from $4.10 to $4.30 to $3.95 to $4.00.

Coming off a solid Q3 that saw overall top-line revenue growth, department stores are finally reaping the rewards of their e-Commerce investments. These retailers appear to have grabbed a sizeable slice of the $20.8 billion consumers shelled out online over the Thanksgiving Weekend. Sales totals for Cyber Monday alone show that the “big four” department stores significantly improved their online offerings at the start of the season, according to analysis of 3 million anonymized and aggregated email receipts from Edison Trends: Kohl’s boosted revenue 42% on Cyber Monday; Macy’s improved revenue 30%; Nordstrom revenue climbed 33%;and Even struggling JCPenney saw a slight sales boost (3%).