Covid brought the next boost

The unique position of North America and in particular the USA on the global home improvement market doesn't really require any further explanation: according the current "Global Home Improvement Report" which the association of manufacturers Hima publishes together with the DIY retail association Edra, North America has a share of 61 per cent of the overall global market.  The numbers one and two alone, Home Depot and Lowe's, represent more than one quarter of the overall sales (27.7 per cent) made with DIY products throughout the world. And market leader Home Depot with its USD 132.110 bn (EUR 113.905 bn) made sales in 2020 which once again lay at 47 per cent above their perpetual pursuer Lowe's at USD 89.597 bn (EUR 77.250 bn).Enough about the balance of power on a global scale: what does it look like in particular on the US American market which we are, after all, discussing here? Home Depot is way out in front here too with USD 122.158 bn (EUR 105.324 bn). With a growth rate of 26.6 per cent, however, Lowe's grew much more strongly last year than its unreachable competitor who expanded by 20.6 per cent.Both are impressively high growth rates - but they are not the highest in the land of opportunity. It was the number three on the market, the Ace Hardware cooperative, who set the benchmark in this discipline in 2020 with the figure of 31.1 per cent. Tractor Supply, the number five in the sales ranking, follows with a plus of 27.2 per cent. If the group of the seven largest US retailers in the DIY trade are observed, the result is an average growth rate of 21.6 per cent in the year 2020 - to USD 272.148 bn (EUR 234.645 bn). In other words: in the year of the pandemic, these companies accumulated around USD 50 bn (EUR 43 bn) more sales than 2019. In order to provide only one comparative figure, that is two-and-a-half times that which the top 10 in Germany made in the year 2020.

Covid-19 gave the overall home improvement market in the USA, which was already in a boom phase beforehand, an enormous boost. The entire extent of this is only really clear when compared to 2019. For example, according to the US Census Bureau, hardware stores made sales of USD 20.087 bn (EUR 17.319 bn) from January to July 2021 (the latest figures currently available). That was…