While the U.S. e-commerce market across the board continues to grow faster than brick-and-mortar retailing, the biggest players in e-commerce are growing at a significantly faster rate than their smaller counterparts as they are able to better fund marketing efforts as well as take advantage in many cases of accessing international markets. Pulling together the 2013 vs. 2012 sales numbers from Internet Retailer’s annual list, the top 15 retailers in the sector grew at a 19.0% rate, whereas the next 34 grew at a 13.6% rate. Moreover, the top 15 accounted for 76% of the total e-commerce sales in the top 49 this year, up a point from the prior year.
While clearly growing faster than brick-and-mortar, e-commerce remains a relatively modest percentage of the overall sporting goods market which is roughly $150 billion at retail. Even accounting for some other e-commerce channels such as Amazon and Walmart, the percentage controlled by digital should still be around 8-9% of the total. The top 49 here account for just over 6%. Where that is headed remains a subject of debate, of course. Retailers deeply involved in omni-channel used to think 15% was a reasonable ceiling but more of them now think it will go higher. Still, there are broad swaths of the market where e-commerce is relatively developed. Many retailers catering to small markets still don’t see the returns justifying the investment in e-commerce, or are just starting to address this channel.
