Amazon and Apple fastest growing US retailers

Each year, Stores Magazine publishes their top 100 of US-based retailers, ranked on annual sales in their home market. This year, Amazon and Apple are the two fastest growing companies by a large margin, but Wal-Mart’s lead seems unbridgeable. 

Amazon and Apple grow fastest

Amazon, the world’s main online retailer, witnessed a sales growth of 46.2% last year – to 18.5 billion dollar (13 billion euro). Jeff Bezos’s company jumps forward seven places, from 26th to 19th, mainly because of the huge success of e-reader Kindle. Amazon now sells more e-books than  hard copies. 

Apple Store – Steve Jobs’s retail concept – grew from 6.7 to 18 billion dollars, which according to Stores is a growth of 32.3%. Any miscalculations put aside, the iPhone, iPod and iPad are phenomenal successes. 

Wal-Mart crushes the rest

As fast as these companies may grow, nobody comes near market leader Wal-Mart, whose sales are as high as those of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 combined. Their 307 billion dollar (216 billion euro) sales are just 0.6% higher than last year’s, owing to the success of their smaller ‘Express’ stores in rural areas. There are no changes in the rest of the top 10 either, the only change is that numbers 9 and 10 swap places. 

“Not easy to stay at the top”

Susan Reda of Stores Magazine congratulates the top companies: “Remaining at the top of one of the most competitive business in the US is not easy. The biggest retailers have to keep up and invent new initiatives, in order to remain relevant – while on the other hand dealing with an ever growing competition with other companies, both from the US and abroad.”

The complete top 100 can be found at  www.stores.org/stores-magazine-july-2010/top-100-retailers