There’s more to come

America’s largest conventional retailers are fighting back against the world’s largest web retailer, Amazon, and all the other e-commerce retailers, which have been siphoning off bits and pieces of the hardware/home centre market for the last decade.
But fortunately for the thousands of independent hardware and home centre retailers, major wholesale suppliers are also stepping up web sales programmes by emphasising ship-to-store programmes involving their retail customers.
During the last three years, and increasingly during the last year, the world’s two largest home centre chains and the world’s largest retailer have racked up web sales gains of 20 per cent or more, far outpacing their overall sales gains as America’s economy improves.
These companies have done it by resorting to a raft of measures: major changes and improvements to their websites, offering ship-to-store so customers can get quick access to the products being purchased, and offering a broader range of products than can be found in their own retail stores. Those same advantages and changes are being offered by Ace Hardware, Do it Best, Orgill and True Value, the four largest hardware distributors in the United States.

Ship-to-store is perhaps the most important concept now being used by conventional retailers. The concept makes it easy for customers to get their merchandise quickly and without any shipping costs. It also offers retailers the opportunity to expose consumers to their full range of products as well as to establish a relationship with those customers when they come in to pick up merchandise.
Home Depot’s web sales grew 37 per cent in 2014 and now account for 4.5 per cent of total sales (2013/2014: 3.5 per cent), which reached USD 83.2 bn. Web sales grew by USD 1 bn last year, nearly one quarter of the entire sales gain for that year.
Based on that metric and for the year ending on February 1, Internet Retailer magazine estimated that web sales had reached USD 3.762 bn, up 36.9 per cent from USD 2.747 bn in 2013. “Almost 40 per cent of online orders are picked up in the store,” CEO Craig Menear told Wall Street analysts recently.
Lowe’s, which had another good year like Home Depot, has also been focusing on online sales. While offering ship-to-store as one option, it has developed a…