Online shopping surged Monday, offsetting sluggish holiday-season sales at brick-and-mortar stores.
Internet retail commerce rose 11 percent Monday compared with the same day last year, according to online-marketing firm Coremetrics.
The Monday after Thanksgiving has been coined “Cyber Monday” in the retail industry to reflect the phenomenon of people using computers to shop in favor of physical visits to stores and malls.
Store retail sales over the weekend — traditionally one of the biggest shopping periods of the year — fell on a per-capita basis compared with last year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
Shoppers on average spent $343 over the weekend, compared with $373 for the post-Thanksgiving period last year, the federation said. Total spending for the weekend was estimated at $42.1 billion, virtually unchanged from last year, because more people shopped even though they bought less per person.
Cyber Monday online sales were expected to exceed $900 million this year, making it the biggest day for online retail sales ever, said ComScore Inc., which tracks Web data.
Greenwood Village-based retailer said sales through mid af ternoon Monday were up 50.1 percent compared with the same day last year.
“Our business is flying,” said eBags co-founder and senior vice president Peter Cobb. “We were thinking that a 20 percent increase would have been a home run, so I guess this represents a grand slam.”
Cobb said the business was on pace to have 200,000 online visitors Monday and sales of an estimated 10,000 purses, handbags and other items — both records for the company.
The company’s 100-person customer-service center in Greenwood Village was busy but not overloaded, Cobb said.
He attributed part of the sales increase to a campaign to get wholesalers to offer discounted prices earlier in the holiday season.
“We convinced them to bring products on sale now, instead of waiting till Dec. 26,” Cobb said.
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
