Top 500 Online Retailers in the US: The Pure Players Gain More Ground

The latest Internet Retailer Top 500 List was published recently and shows that the online pure players are the market drivers. And irrespective of Amazon, they are by wide margin the strongest growth e-commerce segment (“What the 2011 Top 500 reveals”):

"Overall, with Amazon included, Top 500 web-only merchants grew 30.6% to about $56.89 billion last year from $43.55 billion in 2009.

But even without Amazon, sales for the remaining web-only merchants grew year over year 19.5% to $22.7 billion from $19.0 billion.

A total of 68 retailers among 205 Top 500 web-only merchants also met or exceeded the growth rate of 18% for all Top 500 retailers, and 85 grew as fast or faster than the increase in U.S. e-commerce sales of 14.8%.

Instead of trying to outwrestle Amazon.com, other web-only retailers found success by concentrating on their niches, making acquisitions or diversifying."

Strong as usual is the mass customization segment – from Vistaprint (36^th place) and Shutterfly (66^th) to Cafepress (122^th) and Zazzle (134^th) to MyMMs (490^th).

Private sales shopping clubs in the US are following the European trend and have entered into the top leagues of America’s e-commerce sector. Within the top 500, five such companies are represented and Gilt Groupe and Ruelala are for the first time now under the top 100:

• Gilt Groupe was already leading the pack at 140^th place in 2010 and has sprung now with $420 million of revenue to 49^th place. Ruelala steps up to 82^nd place from 103^rd place with revenues of $235 million.
• Within the top 200 were also Hautelook (rising from the 191^st spot to 156^th) which is now a part of Nordstrom (in 34^th place). Newly at 191^st place is the Canadian Beyond the Rack.
• Ideeli is ranked at 310^th under the Top 500

In the live shopping segment, Woot! is now a part of Amazon and is not separately ranked like last year. Instead, 1-Sale-A-Day has reached rank 161. The jewellery auction site Bidz is at 150^th place.

Also other newcomers such as Alice.com (467^th) and Modcloth (403^rd) have made it under the top 500.

The market in the US is in movement. Besides Zappos and Woot!, Amazon took over Diapers in 2009/2010. And recently Walgreen (73^rd) acquired Drugstore (46^th).

It is redeeming to see that in the Market Analysis ("What the 2011 Top 500 reveals"), Internet Retailer is also seeing what Exciting Commerce has been describing for years.

Related posts:

• Internet Retailer: Top 500 in the USA (2009)
• Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide (2008)

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.

Comments

[ecommerce]

it's so amazing to know about the top 500 retailers as this is possible because of their performance and services. I've heard about the J.C.Penny, which is on 20th right now. They have lost their ranking on Google because of using some non search engine friendly technique by their seo services provider, but it was good to see how they came back!!