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14 By Martin Vilaboy Inside Outdoor | FALL 2020 A Stay-at-‘Home for the Holidays’ Opportunities and forecasts for holiday 2020 O ne of the initial steps to forecasting a holiday shopping season is to analyze results and trends from the previous year. Not so much in 2020. As with most things in life this calendar year, the realities of late 2019 could be irrelevant to late 2020, and the holiday shopping season could be like none we’ve seen before. Of course, that doesn’t mean all logic and reasoning go out the window when predicting market trends and shifts. Looking back at the back-to-school season, for ex- ample, armed with the benefit of hindsight, many of the shifts in spending that occurred made absolute sense. As parents had to shuffle to prepare for kids learning at home, spending on traditional “school supplies” and trendy apparel took the hit, show NPD Group figures. Segments that gained the most included laptops and electronic accessories, textbooks and educational apps for at-home use, home-schooling tools, Wi-Fi routers and higher-speed bandwidth services. In other words, no real surprises here. Similar to back-to-school, the holiday 2020 shop- ping season is setting up to be a more virtualized and “home-based” experience than anyone expected back