Signet Jewelers is the only pure-play jewelry company to make the National Retail Federation’s 2019 Top 100 Retailers List, which the organization released last week. The list ranks retailers by their previous years’ sales, and Signet—which reported $5.10 billion in sales in 2018—ranks 85th on the annual rundown.
Last year the company ranked 81st on the NRF list, with $5.28 billion in sales; in 2017 it was number 71, with $5.49 billion in sales.
Of course, there were several other retailers—mainly big-box and department stores—that sell jewelry that made the list. Amazon, which brought in $120.93 billion, ranked number two, behind Walmart, which easily topped the list with $387.66 billion in sales in 2018.
Nordstrom’s $15.06 billion in sales puts the Seattle-based chain at number 32, while Saks Fifth Avenue/Lord & Taylor ($4.90 billion) and Nieman Marcus ($4.54 billion) hang in at 88 and 95, respectively.
Rounding out the top 10 in the list, after Walmart and Amazon, are the Kroger Co., Costco, Walgreen’s Boot Alliance, The Home Depot, CVS Health Corporation, Target, Lowe’s Companies, and Albertsons Companies.
The top 10 companies are the same as they were in the list last year, just in a slightly different order.
Stores, NRF’s magazine, cited Walmart’s investments in making its stores lighter, brighter, and more pleasant to shop in in 2018 as a factor that helped keep the mega-chain on top.
Amazon, which is still a pretty distant second to Walmart in terms of sales, is still “the most disruptive and influential force in the retail industry,” writes the magazine’s staff, which cited the retailer’s ability to host vendors and suppliers that sell independently on the site as both groundbreaking and a platform poised for growth.
The leading U.S. supermarket, Kroger, “has been embracing big data and technology for a number of years, first with its alliance with number cruncher dunnhumby and more recently with British automated grocer Ocado Group,” writes the magazine’s staff. Kroger invested $250 million in Ocado last year, and the two companies will open the first of “about 20 automated warehouses” around the country to handle online grocery services.
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