Dealer sales keep humming

There were big winners and big losers on the latest Monthly Sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau. Hardware and building supply dealers were among the winners.

Another big winner was the category of non-store retailers – think “ecommerce.”

NAICS 444 sales for the month of August rose 15.4% compared to Aug. 2019. Compared to the prior month on an adjusted basis, sales for the “building material & garden equipment and supplies stores” (a category that includes hardware stores and home centers) increased 2.0%.

Big winners compared to Aug. 2019:
• Nonstore retailers (code 454), up 22.4%
• Building material and supplies (444), up 15.4%
• Food & beverage stores (445), up 10.0%.

Big losers compared to Aug. 2019:
• Clothing stores (448), down 20.4%
•Gasoline stations (447), down 15.4%
•Department stores (4521), down 16.9%.

The nonstore/ecommerce category was the only retail category to outpace NAICS 444.

Data for hardware stores, or NAICS 44413, is not available for August. But the latest numbers show July were 2,802,000,000, an unadjusted basis. That’s up more than 12% from the same month last year.

Overall, across all retail sectors, advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $537.5 billion, an increase of 0.6% from the previous month, and 2.6%.

Those gains show consumers are shopping through the pandemic, but the growth rate of their spending is slowing down.

Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $537.5 billion, an increase of 0.6 percent from the previous month, and 2.6 percent above August 2019.