Holiday season not kind to high-tech products

[January 9th 2001]

Although many e-commerce followers are now saying that online holiday sales increased this season compared to 1999 figures, the boom apparently did not extend to sales of technology products at pure-play e-retailers. According to OneChannel.net sales in this category actually decreased in 2000.

In a year-to-year comparison of the first 19 days of December, actual online technology shipments from a specific group of e-retailers monitored by OneChannel.net each year, declined from approximately $177 million in 1999 to about $169 million in 2000. (The 19-day period was selected to include the same number of weekend days, traditionally lower shopping days for these e-tailers.) The drop is even more significant when measured against the high expectations that many e-tailers and industry observers had held for a dramatic increase in online holiday buying in hopes that this might rescue ailing dot-coms.

Retailers reporting sales of technology products in the OneChannel.net sales census include pure-play e-tailers such as Buy.com, Egghead.com, Outpost.com, Onvia.com, Computers4Sure.com, and Solutions4Sure.com as well as several smaller sites and multi-channel retailers Tiger Direct and Zones.com.

"The individual fortunes of retailers in our census differed significantly," said Tim Haight, vice president of editorial content for OneChannel.net. "While the total census was a bit below flat, year-to-year, some retailers did much better than others." OneChannel.net does not release the sales figures of individual retailers.

Although year-to-year sales declined slightly, the weekly sales trend in late November and December showed a clear holiday-buying surge. Sales peaked the week ending Dec. 16 at $67.5 million, rising throughout December. By contrast, sales for the week ending Nov.18 amounted to $52.1 million.

A handful of product categories bucked the overall trend and showed very healthy gains, including PDAs, digital cameras and PC audio products such as MP3 players. A more detailed report is available at the OneChannel.net Website.

Links
OneChannel.net		http://www.onechannel.net