Challenger brand Lowes follows with 25% and Menards 7%
Key Takeaways
In 2020, when stay-at-home orders first went into effect and people began working, learning, playing, and eating all within the same four walls and time on our hands, what used to be bearable imperfections quickly became must fixes. With sit down restaurants, parks, movie theaters, and the like shut down, home improvement projects skyrocketed as people tried to transform their home into an oasis. In order to see how much online spend on home improvement projects increased as well as which players took the lion’s share of the market, Edison Trends took a deep dive into over 300,000 online transactions.
Which home improvement retailer leads in online sales?
Figure 1: Chart shows estimated home improvement market share of online spend from May 1, 2020 - April 30, 2021 at Harbor Freight, Tractor Supply Co., Build.com, Ace Hardware, Menards, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, according to Edison Trends. This analysis is based on over 300,000 online transactions. Note: Due to rounding, numbers may not add to 100%.
Online home improvement spending is led by Home Depot, which in April 2021 took in 59% of what customers spent online at general home improvement venues. Lowe’s had 25%, and Menards had 7%. Other players include Ace and Build.com at 3%, Tractor Supply Co. at 2%, and Harbor Freight at less than 1%. In general these merchants’ share of online spend remains about the same as in May 2020.
Figure 2: Chart shows estimated home improvement online spend by month from January 1, 2020 - April 30, 2021 at Harbor Freight, Tractor Supply Co., Build.com, Ace Hardware, Menards, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, according to Edison Trends. This analysis is based on over 300,000 online transactions. Note: the highest value was set to 100, and all other values scaled accordingly.
Online spending on home improvement rose drastically between January and May 2020, as social distancing became the norm. Spending at Ace Hardware rose 647%, while Menards and Tractor Supply Co. each saw a rise of over 300%. Harbor Freight rose 211%. Home Depot grew 163% over that period. Build.com, the only vendor analyzed that is online-only, did not see a rise.
Figure 3: Chart shows estimated home improvement online spend by month from January 1, 2020 - April 30, 2021 at Build.com, according to Edison Trends. This analysis is based on over 4,000 online transactions. Note: the highest value was set to 100, and all other values scaled accordingly.
Looking at changes in spending YOY, Build.com has seen the greatest bump, with spend increasing 57% from April 2020 to April 2021. Ace Hardware saw a 9% increase. Home Depot and Tractor Supply Co. remained about the same YOY. Menards’ online spend fell 12%, while the fall at Lowe’s was 16%. Harbor Freight fell 37%. Taken all together, these brands fell 5%.
To learn more about the data behind this article and what Edison Trends has to offer, visit https://trends.edison.tech/.
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