Overstock.com, one of the largest online retailers on the web today, has released their first-quarter financial report for this year.
The Salt Lake City-based company reported revenue growth of nine percent, bringing in a whopping $341.2 million, compared to $312 million during the first quarter of 2013.
Gross profit climbed from $58.9 million in Q1 2013 to $64 million in Q1 2014 — a nine percent increase.
The financial statements are the first to be produced by the company since they began accepting bitcoin payments in January of this year, following last year’s announcement in which NEWSBTC spoke to company CEO Patrick Byrne.
In early March of this year, the company announced they had surpassed $1 million worth of sales paid for in bitcoin.
Byrne said at the time that he did not expect his company to hit the milestone so quickly, adding that bitcoin users are “good customers”.
It’s unclear as to whether or not Overstock’s revenue growth is attributed to bitcoin acceptance, but it isn’t farfetched to make the assumption that the move was fantastic for the company from the public relations perspective.
The company garnered a tremendous amount of media attention following the news, which forced them to enable the payments (in partnership with Coinbase) six months sooner than planned.
When I spoke Byrne last year, his projection was that bitcoin payments would start in the second half of 2014.
He later told the media that due to overwhelming attention Overstock.com received from the announcement, they had to move quicker with the plan to prevent a competitor from beating them to the punch.
Since Overstock’s embracing of bitcoin, another major retailer, TigerDirect, has commenced bitcoin acceptance. They too have surpassed the $1 million sales mark, according to recent information.
