Cyber Monday may smash records, make history

The biggest shopping day in history?

Americans were expected to spend $1.5 billion online on Cyber Monday.

John Curley’s guide to Cyber Monday savings

It was estimated this year’s Cyber Monday would be the biggest online shopping day of the year for the third year in a row: Research firm comScore predicted Americans will spend $1.5 billion, up 20 percent from last year.

But it wouldn’t be just the biggest spending day of the year, according to Andrew Lipsman with comScore. “$1.5 billion would represent the heaviest online spending day in history.”

Early results showed that online shopping was up 25.6 percent compared with the same time period a year ago, according to figures by IBM Benchmark released at 3 p.m.

The holiday outlook isn’t just good online – Jan Teague, President and C.E.O. of the Washington Retail Association, has seen an increase in shopping over the holiday weekend, and expects people will keep hitting the mall until Christmas.

Part of that, according to Teague is our employment picture, which with the help of Boeing and Microsoft puts Washington residents ahead of other states.

“I think we’ll have a really good holiday season – that’s what I’m hearing from the retailers. They did have a good weekend,” said Teague.

Music to retailers’ ears: This year because Thanksgiving fell earlier in November, there will be more days to shop. Said Teague, “As long we don’t have a big, bad snow storm that keeps people home they will be out shopping every day. It should be a really strong season for Washington.”

The Associated Press and KIRO Radio’s Tim Haeck contributed to this report.