Big US retailers have sustained the pandemic induced growth

During the third quarter in US retailing store retailing kept on growing faster than online, which saw a declining growth rate after huge growth numbers from the previous year.

However, online is still on a significantly higher level than it was before the pandemic. The two year growth number for online is +40%.

Of the big retailers most grew less from the last year than the industry in general. The numbers were influenced by very high comparison figures from the year prior. Thus, the two year growth rates of most big retailers remain much higher than the industry growth.

Three companies worth pointing from the Q3 results.

Amazon managed to grow its US business faster than online retailing in US in general. However, these figures include both Amazon’s own retail business and the marketplace numbers. All Amazon product sales on the other hand grew only by 4% compared to last year, rather significantly less than the market.

Macy’s illustrates the plight of the fashion and the department. Huge growth this year compared to the industry, but only modest growth compared to 2019.

Costco has been a successful outlier in the big retailer category. It has been to outperform the market in both one and two year comparisons.