Record-Setting Holiday Season For Amazon Prime

Amazon customers purchased enough miniature flashlights to satisfactorily light four collegiate football fields in accordance with NCAA standards.

Seattle, WA — Amazon announced a record-setting holiday season for Amazon Prime, the annual membership program offering unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping on millions of items. More than one million customers around the world became new Prime members in the third week of December. On Amazon’s peak shipping day, more Prime items were shipped worldwide than ever before. The entire 2013 holiday season was the best ever for Amazon, with more than 36.8 million items ordered worldwide on Cyber Monday, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second, and millions of customers unwrapped Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets this holiday season.
 
“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and we now have tens of millions of members worldwide. They benefit from all-you-can-eat free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items and our members have a voracious appetite,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year."
 
Shipping:
  • Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday.
  • The last Prime One-Day Shipping order that was delivered in time for Christmas was placed on Dec. 23 at 10:22 p.m. PST and shipped to Carlsbad, California. The item was a Beautyrest Cotton Top Mattress Pad.
  • The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas went to Everett, Washington. It was a Plantronics Audio 655 USB Multimedia Headset in Frustration Free Packaging ordered at 12:26 p.m. PST on Christmas Eve and delivered at 3:56 p.m. PST that same day.
  • Amazon.com shipped enough items with Prime this holiday to deliver at least one gift to every household in America.
  • Prime was so popular this holiday, that Amazon limited new Prime membership signups during peak periods to ensure service to current members was not impacted by the surge in new membership.
 
Customer Purchases:
  • On Cyber Monday, customers ordered more than 36.8 million items worldwide, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second.
  • More than half of Amazon customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday.
  • Between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, Amazon customers ordered more than five toys per second from a mobile device.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough Crayola Marker Makers to be able to draw a line around the world four times.
  • The new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 gaming consoles were so popular that at the peak of sales for each console, customers bought more than 1,000 units per minute.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough Rainbow Looms from third-party sellers that the bands can stretch around the circumference of the Earth.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough Hot Wheels from third-party sellers to stretch around the Daytona International Speedway racetrack.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough miniature flashlights to satisfactorily light four collegiate football fields in accordance with NCAA standards.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough running shoes to provide a pair to every participant in the top 10 largest marathons in the world.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough winter boots to keep everyone living in three of the coldest cities in America – Duluth, Minnesota, Butte, Montana, and Watertown, South Dakota – warm for the winter.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough cross-body purses to outfit every attendee at a typical Taylor Swift concert.
  • If you stacked every Himalayan Crystal Lamp purchased by Amazon customers this holiday season, the height would reach the top of Himalaya’s highest peak - Mt. Everest.
  • Amazon customers bought enough books in the Divergent Series – “Divergent,” “Insurgent,” “Allegiant,” and the complete box set – to wrap around Chicago’s Pier Park Ferris Wheel 263 times.
  • If you placed every upright vacuum purchased by Amazon customers end-to-end, they would reach 15 times the depth of the Marianas Trench, the deepest point in Earth's oceans.
  • If the Nylabone Dinosaur Chew Toys purchased during this holiday season were stacked on top of each other, they would be the height of more than 950 T-Rex dinosaurs.
  • The number of “Star Trek Into Darkness” Blu-ray combo packs purchased would span the distance of 25 Star Trek Enterprise space ships.
  • If you had a single plain M&M for each Eminem album purchased on the Amazon MP3 Store over the holidays, you’d have nearly 100 lbs. of candy-coated chocolate.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough youth archery kits to outfit every resident of Katniss Everdeen's hometown, District 12, four times over.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough Tovolo Sphere Ice Molds to fill Don Draper’s (of “Mad Men”) whiskey glasses for 251 years.
  • Amazon customers purchased enough Cuisinart Griddlers to place one in every McDonald’s restaurant in the world.
More in Operations