Martin O’Donnell pointed out a Seattle Times article that discusses the performance of Amazon.com’s fulfillment centers during the 2004 holiday season. The article also provides some statistics about overall e-commerce sales:
Consumers spent $2.03 billion online during the five days ending Friday {December 17}, a 49 percent jump compared with the same days last year, according to comScore Networks, which tracks consumer buying online. ComScore attributed the increase partly to free shipping and e-mail campaigns to remind customers of deadlines to take advantage of standard shipping rates.
Two billion dollars changing hands on-line over a five day period is an amazing volume of business for consumer-oriented goods.