Amid the time in retail where eCommerce seems to reign supreme, club stores actually are holding their own and showing revenue growth. Club stores are among the non-traditional retail formats that have performed well in recent years, outpacing performance of traditional full-service supermarkets, says Jon Hauptman, senior director at Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Inmar Analytics.
“According to Inmar’s ‘2019 Future of Food Retailing’ report, in 2018 club stores grew in dollar sales by 3.3 percent versus 2017,” Hauptman explains. “And they enjoyed steady annual growth in the 2 to 3 percent range over the several years leading up to 2018 as well.”