Stable ranking in the top 30

This trade journal has been following the international home improvement market for 30 years. Founded as "DIY in Europe" in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down and the year of international opening, today it is known in the industry as lDIY International.
DIY International is brought out by the German publishing house Dähne Verlag which is specialised in, for example, trade information for the German, German-language and also the international DIY and garden industry. One of the great strengths of the publishing house is its own statistics department, which provides the German and international market with detailed data on the DIY trade.
So, in our editorial office, we thought: instead of a lengthy look back on 30 years in the DIY industry, our readers would be more interested in a current stock take. So here, the statisticians at the Dähne Verlag publishing house present the worldwide top 30 with their key figures for net sales and number of stores from the year 2018 including a comparison to 2017.
What can be read into this ranking? A few indications: the sales ranking remains unchanged from 2017 to 2018 until 12th place. The positions are solidifying, particularly among the frontrunners in the top 5.
There are only some changes from 13th place onwards. The biggest jump was made by the French group Les Mousquetaires by the acquisition of the Bricorama stores which are added to their Bricomarché and Brico Cash stores.

Only 14 companies in the top 30 have their headquarters in Europe. The USA provides six companies, five firms from Japan are represented. However in addition to the historic DIY core areas, South America (Sodimac in Chile) and South East Asia (Home Pro in Thailand) are also on the list.
In order to provide comparability of the companies, net sales have been converted to euros. As exchange rates have fluctuated, often considerably, a calculation of rate of change on this basis would give a distorted picture. Therefore, the rates of change specified in the list refer to the respective local currencies at the headquarters.
In this way, these proportional changes offer a realistic indication of the dynamics in the respective companies. However, the specific conditions must always be taken into account too. For example…