Amazon: Holiday shopping weekend ‘biggest ever’

Amazon said Wednesday that it hit record-breaking sales during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The e-commerce company said the five days between Thanksgiving and the end of Cyber Monday was its “biggest ever” shopping weekend, with customers buying hundreds of millions of toys, clothes and Amazon devices like the Kindle, Echo and home security system Ring.  

Some of the bestselling items on the website were the Echo Dot, Apple AirPods and Fire TV Stick, with New Balance shoes, Burt’s Bees Christmas gift sets and the Amazon smart plug also being top sellers.  

Amazon did not provide total sales for the five-day holiday weekend but said shoppers spent more than $1 billion at small, independent businesses.  

The National Retail Federation released the results of an annual survey Tuesday, stating that 196.7 million people in the U.S. shopped in brick-and-mortar stores as well as online from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.  

The number is the highest recorded since the National Retail Federation began conducting the survey and marks an increase of 17 million people from last year.  

Data from Adobe Analytics found that shoppers broke the one-day record for online sales by spending $11.3 billion online during Cyber Monday.  

Cyber Monday shoppers broke the previous one-day record of $9.12 billion set on Black Friday, according to Adobe data.  

Online shoppers on Cyber Monday spent most of their money buying toys, sales of which grew by 684 percent compared to an average day last month. Electronics and sporting goods also drove sales on the Monday following Thanksgiving.