The third annual HomePage News Top 50 Housewares Retailers report lands this week at a time when the housewares business is on the precipice of another critical holiday season, this one to be defined by anxious consumers still unsure about how they will vote… with their wallets.
Even so, it’s the responsibility of businesses at this time of year, well ahead of the final year-end tallies, to look beyond near-term uncertainty in an attempt to pinpoint prospects for the coming year. And while the Top 50 Housewares Retailers ranking, provided exclusively again this year to HomePage News by market research and analytics leader Circana, looks back a bit in measuring the biggest retailers by housewares sales in 2023, it actually serves as a lens into opportunities that lie ahead.
Retailers will use the ranking as a barometer of market share gains and losses during 2023, which saw the early-year promise of renewed growth for housewares shift into a promotion-driven battle for dollar share against the current inflation that remains a primary shopper concern today.
Suppliers, meanwhile, will use the Top 50 list as a scorecard of their own victories, checking off the retailers they sell like kids a generation ago used to do when they opened a pack of baseball cards. Got ‘em. Got ’em. Don’t got ‘em.
The more valuable utility of such a ranking is in how it provides clues about the future. For retailers, beyond the validation of their standing in the business, the 2023 ranking, viewed in comparison to the rankings from 2021 and 2022, offers a peek over the shoulder at retailers gaining ground and is worth watching in the year(s) to come.
Suffice it to say, Amazon, the top retailer again on this year’s Top 50 Housewares Retailers list, once was barely a blip on such a ranking. This isn’t to suggest there is another Amazon lurking at the back of the pack on the current list, poised to break through and surge toward market leadership in the years to come. But it’s a good bet there are some players on the list, maybe a couple of surprising entries, that are jockeying for a position to finish much higher in future rankings.
And if suppliers don’t got ‘em yet, now is the time, even with so much still to be decided this year, to figure out how to check them off as future customers.
