Overstock.com records huge 'Cyber Monday'

The holiday shopping season has gotten off to a historically good start for one of the nation's biggest Internet retailers. Salt Lake City-based Overstock.com's leader estimated that "Cyber Monday" would be the company's top single sales day ever.

Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne told the Deseret News that Black Friday was the retailer's highest revenue day ever, topping $10 million in sales. However, Byrne noted that Monday was trending even higher.

"Looks like it will be 12 (percent) or 13 percent bigger than Friday," he said Monday afternoon. "We were flat for three years. Now we're back in the black. We're growing nicely."

Byrne attributed the growth in sales to the company's efforts to reduce prices on its products and give the customer the best value available.

"We've sharpened our pricing, squeezed a lot of cost out … and passed that onto the consumer with lower prices," he said.

He added that online buyers saved an extra 5 percent to 7 percent on average over last year's pricing.

"As we squeeze out inefficiencies … (we) ideally take out prices down below where anyone else can follow us," Byrne said.

Nationally, retail Web sites kept amping up the deals Monday, the first day after Thanksgiving weekend's strong online sales, to try to maintain the momentum.

Meanwhile, a research firm that tracks business at stores reported tepid sales and customer traffic for Friday and Saturday that confirmed a so-so start to the season for the bricks-and-mortar world.

Though the Web is only about 10 percent of the holiday shopping pie, it's seen most of the growth so far this year — an encouraging sign after last year's first online sales decline.

Coremetrics, a Web analytics company in San Mateo, Calif., said that as of 1 p.m. on Cyber Monday, sales were up 19.6 percent over a year ago.

The bright spot offers hope after traditional retail sales came in just above flat for Black Friday, with shoppers packing stores but sticking to their lists, going for deep discounts and practical items.

ShopperTrak, which is based in Chicago and tracks sales and traffic at more than 50,000 outlets, said late Monday that retail sales for Friday and Saturday edged up 0.9 percent to $16.77 billion, while customer traffic fell 2.7 percent compared with last year. According to ShopperTrak, U.S. traffic slipped 2.5 percent on Friday, compared with an 18 percent drop in the year-ago period. Traffic fell 3.2 percent Saturday, compared with a 17 percent drop a year ago.