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To: Victor Lazlo who wrote (85683)	11/29/1999 11:46:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164685

Web retailers boast strong Thanksgiving sales By Monica Summers NEW YORK, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Online retailers breathed a sigh of relief on Monday after posting record online sales around the Thanksgiving shopping surge without crashing their Web sites. Web stocks soared as analysts said online sales got off to a strong start over the Thanksgiving weekend -- the kick-off to the year's busiest shopping period and a key milestone for Web retailers seeking to prove themselves as viable long-term businesses. America Online said online spending over the past week nearly tripled compared with Thanksgiving week a year ago, as more than 4 million AOL members made purchases at its ShopAOL mall. Meanwhile, Internet portal Yahoo! Inc. <YHOO.O> said the number of online transactions rose 400 percent on Friday from the same day last year. "Data released over the weekend show that online holiday shopping is off to a strong, though not extraordinary, start," Henry Blodget, retail analyst with Merrill Lynch, said in a report to clients released Monday. "We continue to expect the stocks in the group to be strong over the next few weeks, but also continue to think it likely that they will pull back in early 2000," Blodget said. In one measure of its shopping momentum, Yahoo said in the 10 days prior to Nov. 26 it processed more orders than it did during the entire 1998 holiday shopping season. Analysts expect online shoppers to spend more than $8 billion in 1999, up from $3 billion in 1998, as 70 million consumers, or 72 percent of the total online population, use the Internet for at least some of their holiday shopping. Still, e-commerce retailing remains a small percentage of overall sales for the holiday season -- forecast to total $174 billion, according to government data. Many online retailers were caught off guard during the 1998 holiday season as their Web sites crashed due to heavy traffic. In response, many Web retailers spent much of the past year girding for the shopping binge that is now underway. This year, analysts have said the holidays will either make or break the many Web retailers who have launched their sites over the past year. Both eToys Inc. <ETYS.O> and Amazon.com Inc. <AMZN.O> also enjoyed a jump in share price after both reported a record number of online orders, with Amazon reporting a 150 percent jump in orders alone from midnight Thursday to noon on Friday. Shares of Amazon.com were off 2-7/8 at 90-1/4 after trading up to 96-7/8 on the Nasdaq stock market. Shares of eToys were up 1/2 at 67-1/8 after climbing as high as 70-33/64. "More and more people are coming online and this is really our time to shine," said Jonathan Cutler, a spokesman for eToys, regarding the company's sales over the holiday weekend. "This is our Super Bowl and World Series rolled into one," he said. However, he declined to offer any specific measure of sales activity. Dulles, Va.-based AOL, said that more than 11 million, or 60 percent, of AOL's nearly 20 million members now regularly shop online, making it the largest aggregate audience of buyers in cyberspace, it said. Nonetheless, shares of AOL traded 2-9/16 lower at 80-3/8 on the New York Stock Exchange. It wasn't just big-name Web retailers that enjoyed a jump start in sales. Shares of Bluefly Inc. <BFLY.O, which sells designer clothing online, jumped 11 percent after the online retailer said it enjoyed a 700 percent jump in sales. Shares of New York-based Bluefly gained 2-1/16 to 15-3/8 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq stock market. "What was especially pleasing to us was that the site held up very well and continued to be very fast throughout the weekend," said Ken Seiff, Bluefly's founder and chief executive. "I was actually testing it every couple of hours to make sure we weren't succumbing to the traffic." Comparison shopping sites topped the charts among most visited sites for the holiday weekend, accordi...