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Amazon Sales Record

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Dec 28, 2004 08:58 AM
from the online-is-where-its-at dept.
The Almighty Buck
Arcadi writes "Amazon set a new record of items sold on a single day. More than 2.8 million units or 32 items per second. That's a big store."
+ -
story
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  • Which day? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Albinofrenchy (844079) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:01AM (#11198866)
    From what I've seen, Amazon won't say which day the record was set, or why they won't say which day the record was set. Why the secrecy?

    • Re:Which day? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Attar81 (574867) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:10AM (#11198919)
      It says Thanksgiving Weekend, so I would guess that's it that Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.
      • That's the biggest shopping day for brick and mortar. If everyone is out at the malls, they are far less likely to be at home plugged into the computer.
        • It could be Friday as well for some reasons...
          1. Most people have that Friday off from work.
          2. After looking at the sores they couldn't find what they wanted.
          3. They found what they wanted and went online to buy it at a better price.
          4. To stuffed with turkey to go out.
          5. Don't like the crowds of Black Friday but still want to finish their shopping early.
          6. Unable to find a parking spot and went home
          7. Finish talking to friends and relatives and have a fresh memory on what they want so you buy as much as you can online

          • Re:Which day? (Score:5, Informative)

            by Keighvin (166133) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @11:31AM (#11199884)
            Oh yeah, Friday's big, no question - but it's a far cry from the next Monday, when everyone gets back to work (access to broadband) and begins hunting online for those things which they did not get over the weekend.

            That's when the trend starts, and beyond that marketing has a larger impact than predictable human behavior; so it could have been any time from then until the last week before Christmas when it begins to peter out.

            I work for a significant online competitor of Amazon's and am citing personal experience from having reviewed our bandwith, order rate, and income over the same key points of the holiday season.

        • Re:Which day? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Plutor (2994)
          Actually, Black Friday is not the busiest shopping day of the year, even for Brick-and-Mortar. The two weekends before Christmas almost always push the day after Thanksgiving to fifth-busiest. See Snopes [snopes.com].
          • Black Friday was the busiest shopping day of the year. The recent trend has consumers shifting their shopping closer and closer to Christmas. This causes the retails a lot of worry as you can imagine. They can't really plan and respond in such a narrow time frame when 40%+ of their sales happen in such a short time period. Forecasting sales and predicting if you'll meet your Q4 sales (and annual targets) becomes a right utter bitch.
            • Your best bet would be the last gauranteed shipping day before xmas. This would cover your "last minute online shoppers". 'Cause after that you don't know if your orders will get to their recipients in time and who really wants that?

              It sounds like Amazon was being overly optimistic.

    • OneDay(tm) Shopping (Score:5, Funny)

      by SuperBanana (662181) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:19AM (#11198965)
      From what I've seen, Amazon won't say which day the record was set, or why they won't say which day the record was set. Why the secrecy?

      OneDay shopping. You don't tell anyone about something you're patenting until AFTER you patent it! Jeez, pay attention.

      Meanwhile, let's get some prior art going, people! I've got Monday.

    • Perhaps on the day last week when Harry Potter Book 6 [amazon.com] became available for pre-order. Wouldn't that book alone perhaps count for a million or so of the 2.8 million sales? Especially since Book 5 sold 5 million copies in the first 24 hours [freep.com]?

  • One-click (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:01AM (#11198869)
    Is there any way I can buy all items on said list with One Click, considering it is their novel patented original technological innovation?

  • Wow, early adopters (Score:5, Funny)

    by Whafro (193881) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:02AM (#11198875) Homepage
    SEATTLE (AP) - Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) on Monday said sales of consumer electronics surpassed book sales for the first time and was its largest sales category over the Thanksgiving weekend, launching the online retailer's busiest holiday selling season in 10 years.

    So, erm, they had a bigger day back in like, 1994?

      • Re:No, the parent doesn't have a point. (Score:4, Informative)

        by dorsey (119963) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @10:17AM (#11199336)
        He had a point, you just missed it. He was pointing out the sloppy writing by whoever wrote that article. Saying "busiest... in 10 years" implies that they were busier 10 years ago. If it was absolutely necessary to point out that Amazon has been in business for that long, they should have said something like "busiest... in their 10 year history".

  • Funny coincidence? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AndreyF (701606) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:02AM (#11198878)
    I bought 5 books on Amazon that day-- I used up my gift certificates from Christmas and ordered a textbook for next semester.

  • No shit? (Score:4, Funny)

    by rylin (688457) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:02AM (#11198879)
    What they neglected to mention was that this is because of patent pressure, they are now the only online-store in the united states.

  • 32 items per second? Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mOoZik (698544) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:02AM (#11198880) Homepage
    I don't mean to be a KW (Karma Whore), but that is a staggering amount. Looking at it from a geek perspective, their system has to be such to be able to handle hundreds of thousands of simultaneous surfers and dozens of simultaneous buyers. They clearly have managed to scale-up their operations in such a way that does not negatively impact the operation of their site to the detriment of sales. Way to go, Jeff & Co!

    • Not only that, most of the pages on the site are either encrypted or customized (via datamining), or both. I wonder what kind of servers they're running?

      • Re:Amazon will rule the world. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The customization takes place using "macros" embedded in the HTML/XML of their web pages. These macros are actually C functions, which are called at runtime on the webserver - which runs a single binary called obidos.
    • Yes, its amazing what winME can do when given a chance.
    • Scaling up to accomodate the window shoppers is relatively easy actually. Appservers and webservers run more like a renderfarm than anything else. They all share very little state that changes infrequently. Even if stock levels are all dynamic and updated in realtime, the incoming network will give out before any of the server apps do (web, app, db).

    • Re:32 items per second? Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:46AM (#11199102)
      I'll let you in on a little secret - Amazon.com's codebase was C (now most likely migrated to C++, to take advanatge of things lik OOP among other reasons). It consisted of a gazillion modules which compiled to give you ONE BINARY, called obidos - check out the URL then you'll see what I'm saying. This one binary is then tied to Apache, and then fed out to their 500+ webservers. But the beauty of it is there redundancy measures. At any given time there are 3 copies the binary, a, b & c. a = The latest code. b = yesterday's stable build. c = another stable build. In case there's a bug in some build, they simply have to flip the switch to get an up and running site. It was great, but the part that's a BITCH is developing this stuff. Imagine having to re-compile all of Amazon, just to FIX A BLASTED TYPO. Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...

      • Re:32 items per second? Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Here's another secret: Amazon is mostly migrated to a better system, called Gurupa (any page with 'gp/' in it), where thigns are actually modular and more maintainable. Obidos will eventually be removed. The redundancy measures are completely different now too.

        (yeah, I know, not actually a secret).

  • Profitability? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jacobcaz (91509) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:06AM (#11198896) Homepage
    I wonder what the profit on those 2.8 million items was? It would be interesting to know if it was just a huge pile of loss leaders or bigger ticket items (which might shed some interesting light on the economy and holiday season in general).

    I'm still hearing conflicting reports on the holiday season overall - it was great, it was terrible, it was tepid... I'm still not sure how things went down; I know this year my wife and I probably spent a little less than last year despite our earning over 40% more than last year.

    This is great news...maybe. I would just like more context.

    • I'm still hearing conflicting reports on the holiday season overall - it was great, it was terrible, it was tepid... I'm still not sure how things went down; I know this year my wife and I probably spent a little less than last year despite our earning over 40% more than last year.

      I'll tell you how it went for me... Fucking incredible. We basically bought DVDs (used mostly) and candy. After Christmas (yesterday) we did our most shopping.

      I went to Old Navy armed with holiday gift cards. They were havi
      • There's a reason why Old Navy is so cheap -- it's frigging disposable clothing!

        Wash that Old Navy sweater twice and it will melt away in the dryer -- and you probably thought your neighbors were stealing your shit.

  • Oracle (Score:5, Informative)

    by DogDude (805747) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:06AM (#11198898) Homepage
    I'd like to point out that Amazon DOES NOT use MySQL [dba-oracle.com] before the MySQL kiddies say "see, it can scale!"
    • You're right, if they had been using MySQL, it would have been 64 items per second. ;-)

      Seriously though, wasn't MySQL developed for a Sweedish warehouse company that had to handle like 50,000,000 items?

    • Re:Oracle (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Gopal.V (532678)
      That is because Companies don't change technolgies on the basis of Merit.

      The real story behind Repeat Customers is Vendor Lockins (not to mention "Nobody got fired for buying Oracle" FUD)...

      And my Bank's internet banking still uses COBOL and flat file records...
      • Yeah, MySQL certainly handles high-traffic web sites well. I would have replied sooner, but slashdot kept giving me those HTTP 500 errors....

  • iPods lead electronics sales (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The top selling electronics products were the Apple iPods and a Phillips DVD player. "

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/27/tech/m ai n663270.shtml

    Way to go Apple! Flash iPod is coming!

    Darn there goes my non-disclosure agreeemnt, oh well I felt like getting sued anyway. :)

  • For comparison? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by suso (153703) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:10AM (#11198917) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone have any statistics on how many items say, a single retail store (like Wal-mart) sells in a single day? How about all of the stores in a chain. Data like that would help put things in perspective.

    • Re:For comparison? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jacobcaz (91509) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:18AM (#11198955) Homepage
      • Does anyone have any statistics on how many items say, a single retail store (like Wal-mart) sells in a single day? How about all of the stores in a chain. Data like that would help put things in perspective.
      Well, Wal-Mart has about 3500 stores (give or take a few) and 2.8 million items over 3500 stores is only 800 items per store. A Super Wal-Mart could do this in a few hours per store.

      I would bet that what Wal-Mart does on an average day makes this look like peanuts in comparison. Not to take anything away from Amazon's one-day record, but it's not really a drop in the bucket for Wal-Mart. Remember, they have annual revenues of ~$250 Billion-with-a-B. That's an average daily reveue of $680,000,000.

      • I don't really think that it's a fair comparison. When people shop at Walmart (especially for Christmas) they tend to buy a whole lot of stuff. When most people (or from my experience at least) shop online, they purchase one or two items at a time and from different stores at that. It is much easier to stroll down every isle in walmart and look at every product than it is to see all of amazon's offerings.
    • I'm too lazy to dig through the reports but you can calculate a rough per-store sales number from the financial reports of any of the big retailers. Get a copy of their income statement and the number at the top will be Revenue. (might be called Sales or something else but it's the same number) Dig through a copy of their annual report to find the number of stores the firm has and divide revenue by the number of stores and then divide that by 360 (allowing for holidays) which should give you a rough per-d
    • I think it wouldn't be fair comparing an online shop to a traditional one, at least from the IT perspective.

      When customers purchase at WalMart, they only "hit the database" at check-out at the cash registrar. (OK, maybe they can check prices with a barcode scanner, but that's marginal)

      In an online shop, the whole process is supported by the aplication: searching for items, showing images, specifications, recommendations, and of course, also the check-out.

      Moreover, Amazon.com is a particularly complex on

  • What is it about the iWon.com site that makes me feel all slimy and dirty? Is it the fact that they're major purveyors of spam? Or could it be all the "popup blocker" ads they run to fund their site, duping the rubes into thinking there's a downloadable software solution to the problem that they and their ilk are doing everything to promote--the indiscriminate installation of spyware, malware, and popups.

    It's mildly interesting that Amazon is breaking sales records, but I don't believe a word from that awful site... and as another poster already mentioned-- there's damn little content in the article.

  • ...there are individual Wal-Marts that sell more than 2.8 million units per day.

  • good (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Good for them. I am not located in the US and I have bought from Amazon for years.

    It is the only store that I can buy from without getting into problems with the CC validation using an international credit card not from the US but from a *"third-world country"*.

  • 2.8 Million, at 32 Items per second (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mean_Nishka (543399) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:20AM (#11198967) Homepage Journal
    And not a dime of profit :).
    • That was true in 1998 but now you're way out of date:

      A survey by Thomson First Call put analysts' average estimates at earnings of 39 cents a share on revenue of $2.42 billion.

      In the fourth quarter of last year, the Seattle online merchant earned 17 cents a share on $1.95 billion in revenue.

  • How does this compare to retail giants? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Luscious868 (679143) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:24AM (#11198982)
    I wonder how this compares to the total sales of bricks and mortar retail giants like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Does anybody have any idea?

  • How many got their items on time though? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Warlock7 (531656) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @09:39AM (#11199057)
    It seems that Amazon did great business this holiday season, but they also seem to have miseed some delivery dates. [timesonline.co.uk]

    So, business is good, but some didn't get their gifts in time for the holidays. This kind of begs the question as to what the percentage of on-time deliveries were. Was this a worldwide issue or was it mainly in the UK only?

  • 32 per second? Whoop-de-doo! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2004, @11:00AM (#11199621)
    Ever been in a Walmart? How many times to you hear a 'beep' as an item is registered at the checkout?

    I suspect most large, busy stores clock around 20-30 items sold per second on a regular basis. An enterprise the scale of WalMart might clock in thousands per second for all stores on exceptionally busy days.

    This might be a 'record day' for Amazon, but it's hardly news.

  • As usual, no context for the numbers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wealthychef (584778) on Tuesday December 28 2004, @12:14PM (#11200261)
    SOUNDS like a lot of business, but how much is a lot nowadays? I'd like to know if they are doing twice as much as their nearest competitors, or how many sales per second Home Depot does, etc. Instead we report a large number and stand back to wait for the ignorant people like me to go "wow." This looks like another case of lazy reporters basically forwarding press releases by position advocates and calling that a news article. No wonder blogs are taking over the world!

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