January 02 2007
Best ever Christmas for internet retailers
Early reports indicate that online sales in the run up to Christmas were 50% up on 2005 as internet retailers, including Tesco and Amazon, record their best ever Christmas.
James Roper, Chief Executive of industry body IMRG, said that initial figures are pointing towards online sales being £500 million above the £7 billion it predicted for the 10-week period to Christmas. Online sales over the same time in 2005 reached just under £5 billion.
As the Christmas shopping really got underway in December, consumer spending online reached £3.2 billion, predictably breaking November's record as the best month for online sales. IMRG is due to release an in depth report of the Christmas figures in a couple of weeks and we'll be running an update as soon as it's released. (Further analysis of Christmas 2006 will be included in the January issue of Internet Retailing magazine.)
A record breaking 1.3 million orders were delivered to Tesco.com customers in the 4 weeks to Christmas with toys topping the list of items ordered from Tesco Direct. An extra 300 vans and additional 'dotcom pickers' were brought in to cope with the demand but, as the full delivery slots before Christmas showed, the demand for grocery deliveries was higher than the number of online customers that could be served.
Some 14 million grocery items were ordered on Tesco.com during the Christmas week - including 11,000 turkeys - and many Tesco staff started work at 4am in order to pick customers' orders. Wine orders were up over 50% on last year's level with over 80,000 orders delivered.
Amazon.co.uk received 750,000 orders on its busiest day as consumers continued to buy books, DVDs and toys from the most visited retailer. At one point a delivery lorry was leaving an Amazon distribution centre every 8.5 minutes and 600,000 parcels (representing 320 tonnes), were delivered on the retailers' busiest day.
Emma Herrod
