US online retail continues 17% to 20% year-over-year growth!

Today turned out to be an unusually interesting day for three reasons.

First, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest E-Stats Report for FYE 2010 today, which revealed that online retail reached $169 billion for all of 2010. The Census Bureau data point does not include online auctions or marketplaces. If you add in eBay’s 2010 U.S. Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of $20.4 billion, total online retail could be estimated at approximately $190 billion for FYE 2010. The E-Stats Report also includes preliminary estimates for online retail in 2011 of approximately $194.3 billion. Once again, if you add eBay’s 2011 GMV of $22.8 billion, total online retail could be estimated at approximately $217 billion for FYE 2011.

Second, today comScore released Q1 online retail statistics, which say that online spending in the U.S. reached $44.3 billion (excluding auctions), an increase of 17% over last year. Interestingly, comScore will be hosting a free webinar to review their data in detail—including recent trends toward “showrooming” (in which a buyer goes to a bricks-and-mortar store to compare different items, then leaves the store and purchases online to avoid sales tax).

Finally, today Internet Retailer released their annual Top 500 Guide. As usual, Amazon tops the list with $48 billion in sales.

An interesting data point in the annual ranking includes the dramatic range in revenue from the top of the list to the bottom. At number 500 is Summit Sports with just under $15 million (0.00024% of eBay’s sales volume).

We have always thought it notable that eBay is not included in this list. We understand that as a marketplace operator, they are not the direct retailer; rather, they aggregate millions of sellers under one roof. However, if eBay were included on the list, based upon only their marketplace and GSI business units (excluding PayPal), they would beat even Amazon with $62 billion in GMV in 2011 (worldwide).

Here’s an interesting observation about the census and Internet Retailer data. The total online commerce represented in the Top 500 list—which, you’ll remember, ends with a retailer that had just under $15 million in sales in 2011—was $150 billion in 2010. However, the census data reports $190 billion for 2010. That year, the retailer at the bottom of the Top 500 list was MagnetStreet with $11 million. Since the census figure includes all retailers while the Top 500 figure includes only retailers with more than $11 million in annual sales in 2011, we now know how much businesses with less than $11 million in annual sales generated together in 2010.

In other words, because it didn’t count businesses with less than $11 million in annual sales in 2010, the Top 500 list only accounted for $150 billion in total ecommerce sales in 2010 instead of $190 billion.

That’s $40 billion in ecommerce being transacted by merchants with less than $11 million in annual sales! It’s also important to remember that the IR Top 500 Guide is not restricted to US sales but includes all sales worldwide. So there could be considerably more than $40 billion in ecommerce that’s still under the radar.

There are a lot of conclusions that could be drawn from this, but we’ll save those discussions for another post at a later date.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2012 at 12:55 am and is filed under Federal Legislation, Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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