Amazon Sees Big Year While Retail Stays Tepid

While the holiday shopping season had a slow start, Amazon had a bang-up run, and it’s not over yet. At the same time, traditional retail stores were warm … ish.

eCommerce operators saw their largest Cyber Monday ever this year — sales surpassed $3.3 billion — and almost every day thereafter online retailers saw sales of more than $1 billion.

So, indeed, other online retailers did have a good year, just not as good at Amazon’s.

The tech giant set a record season with its Echo sales alone. In a press release, Amazon said the 2016 holiday season was its best ever, with the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Fire Tablet and Amazon Echo on the top of the bestseller lists. What’s more, sales of the Amazon Echo family of devices were up nine times compared to the holiday season last year.

As for other items that Amazon sold, here are some stats Amazon shared with the Huffington Post. As wacky as they may be, if nothing else, they could be perfect for conversation starters that New Year’s Eve cocktail party.

Into the blue: The number of men’s jeans Amazon sold over the holidays could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Bake-off begins: If anyone who nabbed a KitchenAid Mixer on Amazon after Halloween commenced baking simultaneously together on Jan. 1, they’d whip up more than 7.5 million cookies.

Three-quarters full: Nearly three out of four Amazon customers went holiday shopping via a mobile device.

By the second: On Cyber Monday, about 46 electronic devices and 36 toys were purchased per second via mobile device. (If we’re doing the math right, that’s nearly 4 million devices and 3 million toys — in one day!)

No need to hike: Line up all the TVs sold since Halloween, and they’d be longer than nine times the height of Mount Everest. (By the way, more than 4,000 TVs were bought.)

Harry Potter forever: The number of Harry Potter movies sold this season could be played one after another … for 300 years straight.

Time is telling: More than 2.5 million watches were bought, which equals about one watch every 90 seconds.