By Joey Gardiner, 10 April 2001 14:16
NEWS The results - which also show the rest of the company in rude health, despite the foot and mouth crisis - show Tesco sold £237m worth of goods online in 2000, delivering a £9m loss. It claims it now receives in excess of 70,000 orders per week over the internet, which it claims is at least four times as much as its nearest UK rival. Tesco.com's closest global competitor, Peapod, sells only $2m (£1.4m) of groceries per week. Tesco.com's success is in spite of the fact consumers have to pay £5 for delivery. Tesco says it has no plans to change this, or the delivery system whereby web orders are actually collected by staff at stores, and then delivered. A spokesman said: "If we invested in warehouses for distribution, we would never make our money back, and we wouldn't be able to deliver across the country. All over the world, internet grocers are now coming round to our way of thinking on this." However, despite Tesco.com's relative success, analysts say its ecommerce operation is only equivalent to about four medium-sized stores by volume. Web revenues account for just one per cent of turnover, and are still only one ninth of the value of e-tailer Amazon's sales. Tesco.com CEO John Browett is also one of Europe's top IT agenda Setters, according to silicon.com's latest Agenda Setter 2001 survey. For more information, see http://www.silicon.com/as2001
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