Ladies' wear still tops in sales - Discount Industry Annual Report: Part 2: Merchandising & Productivity

Discount Store News, July 17, 1989

Ladies' Wear Still Tops in Sales

Combined $28B Apparel Sales to Account For Almost One-Third of Full-Liners' Volume

Fourteen distinct product categories will generate nearly $86 billion of the projected $89.4 billion full-line discount department stores will ring up in sales this year.

Ladies' wear, as expected, will be the top volume-producing category, with $14.5 billion in sales at full-liners. With an average women's apparel department of 11,000 square feet, the average discount store will reap about $1.8 million in sales from its women's apparel department.

Housewares, including electric and personal care appliances, non-electric household products and ready-to-assemble furniture, will produce nearly $11.9 billion in sales for full-line discount department stores. Department size for all housewares will average 7,550 square feet and sales per store will hit nearly $1.5 million.

The next-highest sales categories at full-liners are projected to be hardware, including paint ($7 billion), children's wear ($6.8 billion), consumer electronics ($6.5 billion), men's wear ($6.4 billion) and health and beauty aids ($6.2 billion).

Automotives will generate $5.8 billion, toys, $4.5 billion, domestics, $4.2 billion, and sporting goods, $4 billion. The photo category, including film and cameras, will produce sales of $3.1 billion. Stationery, including non-electronic home office products, back-to-school and greeting cards, will generate $2.8 billion, followed by jewelry with $2 billion.

Other products, such as food and snacks, pets and accessories, tobacco, building supplies and the like, will total $3.7 billion in sales this year.

The 14 categories shift dramatically when ranked by the amount of sales they generate per square foot of selling space. The photo category, given less space by many discounters, leads in sales floor productivity. High priced camcorders, often included in this figure, will help push the department to over $750 per square foot in sales. Other categories that yield high sales per square foot of selling space will be jewelry ($384.62), consumer electronics ($353.26), and automotives ($315.22).

The fastest turning department is health and beauty aids. Other high-turn categories include men's and women's apparel and stationery. The merchandise categories that turn the slowest are sporting goods, hardware and jewelry.

In terms of gross margin, the leaders will be: jewelry (42.8 percent), stationery (41.7 percent), domestics (34.2 percent), men's wear (33.1 percent), women's wear (32.3 percent), hardware (32.3 percent), and children's wear (30.6 percent).

Altogether, the 14 categories average an annual turn rate of 3.31 times and a gross margin of 28.95 percent.

DSN projects full-line discount store productivity by merchandise category based on its annual projections of discount store sales.

This special section is the second part of DSN's annual state-of-the-industry report. Part I, which was presented in the July 3 issue of DSN, provided information on the top 150 discount department stores, membership clubs, off-price apparel chains, catalog showrooms and other types of specialty chains in the nation, the leading variety store chains, top general merchandisers, deep discount drug chains, and electronics and home shopping services.

Part II: Merchandising and Productivity Analysis begins on page 36 with special merchandising reports on the 14 top discount department store product categories. DSN examines the sales productivity of the top 150 discount chains on page 57 and provides a look at discount department store, membership club and catalog showrooms' store count by region and state, including the top chains in each region and state, on page 59.

The special report, compiled by the entire DSN staff, concludes with special profiles on the leading full-line discount department store chains.

PHOTO : Ladies' wear will be the top volume-generating category at discounters this year, with

PHOTO : sales projected at $14.5 billion at full-line discount stores.