Top Online Retailers Sales Outpace Overall Retail Sales

The combined 2008 sales of the 500 largest U.S. web retailers grew by 11.7 percent to $115.85 billion from $103.69 billion in 2007, according to Internet Retailer, which estimates that total U.S. business-to-consumer e-commerce sales grew year over year by 4.6 percent to $178.18 billion from $170.41 billion.

Despite the bad economy, the combined sales of the top 500 in 2008 grew nearly eight times faster than the overall retailing market, according to Internet Retailer’s soon-to-be-published Top 500 Guide.

According to the results, e-commerce accomplished what stores and catalogs couldn’t last year - drive sales. In 2008, the collective sales of the 100 largest merchants in the Top 500 Guide grew by 14.3 percent to $98.60 billion.

The biggest 100 retailers accounted for 55.3 percent of U.S. web sales. Smaller niche Top 500 merchants also slightly outpaced the e-retailing industry’s overall growth rate. Last year the combined revenue of the Top 500’s 100 smallest merchants – companies with annual revenue of $9 million to $15.2 million – increased by 13.2 percent to $1.20 billion from $1.06 billion in the prior year.

As in previous years, web-only merchants posted the biggest increases in Internet sales across all merchant categories in 2008.

The e-commerce market wasn’t recession proof in 2008, Internet Retailer reported. Last year 74 Top 500 retailers had flat or declining sales, compared with 25 in 2007 and just 13 in 2006. Despite this, the Internet was clearly the channel that drove sales for many merchants, especially chain retailers.

For 31 of the top 50 chains, Internet sales increased while total sales declined. And for those chains, 41 of 50 had web sales that grew while comparable store sales declined.