Buy.com Reports Strong Holiday Sales; 35 Percent Increase in Orders; Traffic Increased 33 Percent Over Last Year's Holiday Season

Business Wire, Jan 6, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ALISO VIEJO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 6, 2003

Buy.com Inc., The Internet Superstore(TM), today reported that the total number of orders it received increased 35 percent to 806,000 over the number of orders it received during last year's holiday season.

Traffic also increased more than 33 percent compared with last year's holiday shopping season, with more than 130,000 shoppers visiting the site each day.

The strong performance was led by Buy.com's consumer electronics and entertainment (books, videos, music and games) product categories. Orders for consumer electronics increased 66%; while entertainment orders were up 106%. Orders for books lead the way in the entertainment category -- up over fourfold -- and game orders were almost double the previous year.

Hot electronic products for the holidays included Samsung's DVD-V2000 DVD+MP3 Player/HiFi VCR; iRiver's IMP+350 Slimx CD/MP3 Player; Sharp's VL-AX1U MiniDV camcorder; and Panasonic's PV-D4742 Double feature DVD/HiFi VCR C. PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube platforms all sold well. Best selling titles in the game category were Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2), SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals (PS2), Metroid Prime (GC), Kingdom Hearts (PS2), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (PS2). Other high demand products were digital cameras, home networking equipment and flat-screen LCD monitors.

"We are pleased with our success this holiday season, and more importantly, we see this success as an indication of meeting our customer's needs," said Robert Price, president for Buy.com. "This has been a year of increasing momentum for Buy.com, and I believe that all of our moves in 2002 -- free shipping, reducing book prices, new categories, Buy Magazine -- have all enhanced our commitment to providing our customers with the best possible online shopping experience available. This holiday season was simply proof of that."

A convenient shopping experience is another one of Buy.com's inherent strengths. Last month, the site was named by Gomez Inc. as this year's Number One online holiday shopping site for music, electronics and books.

Gomez gave Buy.com the top spot based on shortest site response time (7.4 seconds) and availability (99.71 percent). Buy.com beat Barnes and Noble, Radio Shack and Amazon.com among others for the two-week period of Nov. 20-Dec. 2, the first push in the holiday shopping season.

About Buy.com

Buy.com, The Internet Superstore(TM) and low price leader, offers its more than 5 million customers more than 1.5 million products in a range of categories including computer hardware and software, electronics, cellular products and services, music, DVDs, books, bags and more. Individuals and businesses can shop quickly and easily at Buy.com 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Buy.com was named the Number One Online Holiday Shopping Site for music, books and games by Gomez (December 2002). It has also been honored as "Best Overall Place To Buy Mobile Devices" (January 2002), "Best E-Commerce Site" by PC World magazine (June 2001), "Best Overall Place To Buy" by Computer Shopper Magazine (January 2001), a "Best of the Web" in the computer and electronics category by Forbes Magazine (spring 2000 and fall 2000), and the No. 1 electronics e-tailer in the PowerRankings by Forrester Research Inc. (November 2000).

Buy.com, founded in June 1997, is located in Aliso Viejo. For more information, visit www.buy.com.

Note to Editors: Buy.com(TM) and The Internet Superstore(TM) are trademarks of Buy.com Inc.