Whomever said that national chains and e-tailers would sweep away the independent dealer channel hasn’t perused TWICE’s Top 100 rankings recently.
Related: Find out how to obtain a copy of the 2017 TWICE Top 100 CE Retailers Report.
The listing is actually peppered with dozens of independents, most of which are affiliated with buying groups — those national confederations of dealers that pool their resources to obtain competitive vendor programs and marketing, financing and other critical retail services.
Among them, ProSource, the $4.5 billion group for A/V dealers and integrators, alone holds Top 10 sway with the recent addition of computer specialty chain Micro Center. The group is further represented within the Top 40 by B&H Photo and Crutchfield.
Also laying claim to the rankings is the NATM Buying Corp., comprised of some of the nation’s leading regional big-box stores. You may know some of them: P.C. Richard & Son; Nebraska Furniture Mart; BrandsMart USA; and Abt Electronics, among other Top 100 denizens.
But what if all the top buying groups — a list that also includes the mighty Nationwide Marketing Group; ProSource affiliate BrandSource; and the furniture-focused Mega Group USA organization — were combined into one retail entity? How would they stack up?
Based on some admittedly loose back-of-the-napkin calculations (35 percent of approximately $41 billion in combined sales, to mirror the electronics mix), the five leading groups accounted for roughly $14.4 billion in CE sell-through last year.
That would place them at the No. 4 spot on the Top 100, behind Walmart and just ahead of Apple.
