Home improvement retailers are a specialized channel for many types of construction projects including building materials and supplies, fixtures, construction tools and equipment, and more.

This is part one of a three-part blog series on marketing to home improvement retailers.

Part one will provide a retail snapshot, including the results of a 2011 survey on retail marketing practices conducted by the Construction Marketing Association. Part two will cover home improvement retail merchandising and packaging. Finally, part three will discuss retail line reviews.

Retail Snapshot

Retail home center and home improvement stores have a combined revenue of $132.54 billion; with overall home improvement channel sales totaling $205.9 billion in 2011. (Source: Home Channel News).

The retail home improvement category consists of several segments including big box home centers like The Home Depot and Lowe’s, hardware cooperatives including Ace Hardware and True Value, Lumber and Building Material dealers (LBM’s), mass merchants like Walmart and Sears Holdings, and specialty retailers that sell products such as paint, flooring, and farm goods.

The following chart identifies the largest home improvement retailers in North America by number of stores and earnings in 2011 (Source: Home Channel News).

Retailer	Sales ($Mil.) 2011	# Stores 2011
1. Home Depot	$70,395	2248
2. Lowe’s	$50,200	1749
3. Walmart*	$19,400	3868
4. Sears Holdings*	$12,200	3510
5. Menards	$8,800	263
6. Shermin-Williams	$4,780	3450
7. Tractor Supply	$4,230	1085
8. ProBuild Holdings	$3,300	439
9. Harbor Freight Tools	$1,650	380
10. 84 Lumber	$1,430	258

*Mass Merchants, like Walmart and Sears Holdings, were not included in past rankings. However, they are included today because the influence of these stores on home improvement is so large. Mass merchants generated $33.12 billion in revenue, or about 16% of overall home improvement channel sales in 2011.

Retail Marketing Practices Survey

The Construction Marketing Association recently conducted a survey on retail marketing practices to shed insight into this important channel.  The following questions were asked:

• What retail channels do you sell to?
• What approximate percentage of sales are retail (vs. non-retail)?
• What types of retail initiatives do you undertake?
• What types of products do you sell to retail?

And the results….

Home centers/big box home centers were the top retail channel sold to with 70 percent, with hardware cooperatives and ecommerce being the second most with 40 percent.

On average, 53 percent of respondent’s sales are retail. Responses went as high as 100 percent and as low as 15 percent.

Merchandising displays, promotions, and proposals/rfps/bids ranked as the top three types of retail initiatives.

Please share this post with others who are interested in learning more about marketing to home improvement retailers.

Read Part 2…..  Marketing To Home Improvement Retailers: Merchandising and Packaging