By Alan Wolf, YSN
A longstanding rite of spring for the appliance industry is the release of TWICE Magazine’s annual Top 50 Major Appliance Retailer rankings — an exclusive, proprietary list of the largest white-goods dealers in the land.
This year, as in past reports, BrandSource members dominated the sales charts, with no less than a dozen fellow dealers making the grade, according to an assessment by the group’s General Manager Jarred Roy.
The findings, compiled by Louisville, Ky.-based research firm Senex and appearing in the June issue of TWICE, shows the BrandSource contingent outnumbering the next three largest appliance buying organizations, Roy reported. Only the unaffiliated national big-box chains comprised a larger group of Top 50 contenders.
Dealers representing BrandSource in the report include such multi-store members as Albert Lee, Famous Tate and Spencer’s, although TWICE specifically cited University Electric for its chart-busting double-digit growth, with Grand Appliance joining University in posting double-digit sales gains.
The rankings reflect 2019 calendar year revenue, which was derived by Senex through dealer surveys, SEC filings and estimates based on economic models using industry analyses and sizing.
As TWICE Senior Editor Grant Morgan noted in the report, retailers fought hard for their Top 50 turf last year, as the appliance industry faced the multiple headwinds of stiff import tariffs and higher costs and price points. Indeed, vendor shipments fell 4.6 percent for all of 2019, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM), with declines in every major product category except laundry.
Nevertheless, many retailers still fueled growth by peeling off business from Sears and its Hometown Stores, which continued their years-long swan dives in both the rankings and the marketplace.
BrandSource is a unit of YSN publisher AVB Inc.
