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):

1. Amazon: 6.9
2. Dell: 3.2
3. Office Depot: 3.1
4. Staples: 3.0
5. HP: 2.7
6. Sears: 1.7
7. Sony: 1.6
8. CDW: 1.5
9. 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.

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