NFR (National Retail Federation) annually summarizes the performance of major retailers, ranking them by sales volume for the previous year. The 2021 ranking did not see much upheaval or displacement, even though the earlier months were challenging for retailers.
Walmart tops the top 100 for 2021, becoming a consistent industry leader – the hypermarket chain was in first place last year. Total sales for the company in the SCA for 2020 were $430.8 billion.
In second place in the rankings is Amazon, with a more modest figure of $187.3 billion, and in third place is Kroger, which has sales of $131.6 billion. In the top five are also The Home Depot and Costco Wholesale.
Due to the pandemic, many retailers are not only unaffected but, on the contrary, showed growing results for 2020. It is especially true for food and convenience retailers. Six of the top 20 places belong to such companies, and their sales growth for 2020 is in the double digits.
However, for many retailers, the quarantine period was a decisive blow, and in a category where department store chains were in shock, not all companies will recover. In particular, TJX Companies, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, and Macy’s dropped about 30% in the rankings. Also down were sellers of office and dress clothes, cosmetics, and anything else that has become irrelevant to shoppers in quarantine. For example, Sephora sales were down 15 percent. And sellers of comfortable clothing for the home, furniture, and furnishings could take advantage of the increase in customer interest; for example, Lululemon increased its performance by almost 20%.
The creators of the rating note that the winners began to invest in 2018-2019 in the development of online infrastructure. At that time, investing in online shopping and self-checkout tools seemed like a waste of money, but during the pandemic, such investments paid off handsomely.
