A look at America’s DIY market

Home Channel News, an American trade magazine, recently estimated that sales for the 300 largest retailers handling DIY products amounted to $228.368 billion in 2013, up 6.4 per cent from 2012. The 300 includes mass merchants like Walmart as well as some retailers like Amazon and others selling online to some degree. That $228 billion figure, however, does not include the sales of thousands of independent hardware stores, home centers and lumber/building material dealers, though the sales for the 300th firm on HCN's list were only an estimated $15.5 million. HCN's list includes specialty firms such as Sherwin-Williams, a paint manufacturer operating its own retail stores as well as supplying product to other retailers and industrial customers. It also includes its estimate of DIY product sales in mass merchants and Amazon. Among the top 20 listed in this article are several firms which operate stores but also do a large mail order and/or Internet business. Chief among those is Harbor Freight Tools. Sears Holdings' data includes its Kmart operations as well as regular Sears stores which have strong tool and paint departments. Sears Hometown & Outlet stores are much smaller, located in suburbs or rural towns and more nearly resemble conventional hardware stores. Looking at per cent of sales gains over the preceding year, the firms with the highest gains are largely lumber/building material dealers, who benefited from the improving housing market. Because of the dominant volumes done by Home Depot and Lowe's, sales per store for the 300 averaged $12.4 million. Without those two, sales per store averaged $4.06 million. Sales-per-employee, however, were remarkably similar – $223,456 with Lowe's and Depot included; $275,186 without them. Sales-per-employee, compiled for some other firms in HCN's list, differ widely. For 84 Lumber, for example, which caters to contractors and builders, has shorter hours and relies less on part-time people, per employee sales were about $500,000. For stores using a large number of part-time employees, however, it is difficult to get a true figure because the number of employees includes part-timers. However, based on total number of employees as listed in the complete list of 300, W. E. Aubuchon, a chain of smaller hardware stores open longer hours and more days per week, shows only $129,166 per employee, a figure which appears to be grossly understated. Sales-per-store figures in the accompanying spreadsheet were compiled by this writer and were not part of the HCN data. Here is a listing of the top 25 with the additional data on sales-per-store, based on HCN's research:
RETAILER
SALE/Bn
% DIFF.
STORES
SALES/STORE
Home Depot
$78,80
5,4
2.263
$34.821.000,00
Lowe's
$53,40
5,7
1.830
$29.180.300,00
Sears Holdings*
$14,90
-8,9
1.930
$7.720.200,00
Walmart*
$13,94
4,8
4.203
$3.316.600,00
Menards*
$9,50
3,3
285
$33.333.300,00
Sherwin-Williams
$6,00
10,9
3.908
$1.535.300,00
Tractor Supply
$5,16
10,6
1.279
$4.034.400,00
ProBuild Hldgs*
$4,30
19,4
415
$12.771.000,00
Sears Hometown
$2,42
-1,3
1.260
$1.920.600,00
84 Lumber
$2,15
32,7
255
$8.431.300,00
Harbor Frt Tools*
$2,14
12
500
$4.280.000,00
Bldrs 1st Source
$1,49
39,2
53
$28.113.200,00
Amazon.com*
$1,30
8,3
1
          n/a
BMC
$1,25
41,4
85
$14.705.800,00
PPF Finishes*
$1,20
110
900
$1.333.300,00
Stock Bldg Sply
$1,20
27
48
$25.000.000,00
Northern Tool*
$1,06
2,9
82
$12.925.800,00
Sutherland Lbr*
$1,04
4,7
54
$19.259.200,00
Lumber Liquid.
$1,00
23
318
$3.144.600,00
Carter Lbr
$0,96
18,3
145
$6.620.600,00