1.   Among other findings, mail order is clearly giving way to online sales.

2.   Analysts expect online sales to triple from last year, the first big holiday season on the Internet.

3.   And the announcement was consistent with other indicators that showed that online sales were up sharply from a year ago, but at a slower pace than expected.

4.   And online clothing sales have done nothing to combat such gloom.

5.   Are local retailers having a hard time competing with the cheaper online sales?

6.   As is the case with virtually every commercial venture on the Internet, the big question for these two companies remains how significant online sales will actually become.

7.   A wave of national and regional housing supply and hardware retailers, including some pure Internet companies, have beaten Home Depot to the Web with online sales.

8.   Brown cited other factors that he said boded well for higher online sales.

9.   But generally speaking, he said, less than half the investments a company makes in its Web division actually pay off in online sales.

10.   But attorneys general have been reluctant to take action against growing mail-order and online sales because there was no effective way for them to prosecute out-of-state companies.