Last night, after we’d exhausted some other scintillating topic, Dave Jilk – who’s been visiting us this week – and I pondered who the top online retailers were last year – specifically who was at the top of the brick and mortar list (ok – we called them “multi-channel retailers” now that the Internet bubble has burst.) I mentioned that I thought Wal-Mart was at the top – he laughed and said – no way, Sears is bigger online than Wal-Mart.
A little web searching later and we found the 2004 Top 400 List Of Online Retailers . The overall article and list is fascinating and there are plenty of unexpected stats on it, including the notion that more than a third of all households in the US made at least one online purchase last year and the total US Internet retail sales was $87.5 billion for 2004 (up 25% over 2003 and 62% over 2002).
The top online retailers are (all numbers are in $billions):
- Amazon: 6.9
- Dell: 3.2
- Office Depot: 3.1
- Staples: 3.0
- HP: 2.7
- Sears: 1.7
- Sony: 1.6
- CDW: 1.5
- Newegg.com: 1.0
Dave was right about Sears thrashing Wal-Mart, which weighed in at #12 (and – more interestingly – only 1% of all Wal-Mart sales, vs. Sears 5% of sales via the web). However, on the brick and mortar front, Office Depot and Staples dominated.