Numbers have always intrigued me. It’s probably because they can shed light on things that make you stop and think.

For instance, did you know that there are more than 34,000 independent home improvement retailers throughout the United States? While it’s an impressive number, it doesn’t really make you stop and think until you put it in proper context. To do so, let’s compare this number with the number of other businesses you might be familiar with. Let’s start with one of the most popular and successful fast-food chains on the planet … McDonalds. You might be surprised to learn there are only 14,000 McDonald’s locations across the country. Doesn’t seem like that many compared with the number of independent home improvement retailers, does it?

Let’s try another one you know … Starbucks. Would you be surprised to learn there are just 17,000 Starbucks locations across the country? That’s just half the number of independent home improvement retailers who operate stores in every city, suburb and town across the country. Independent home improvement retailers are everywhere, and we have been part of the fabric of our communities long before McDonalds fried its first hamburger and before Starbucks poured its first cup of coffee.

Now let’s do another number exercise and calculate the approximate number of shopping trips to independent hardware stores, home centers and DIY lumberyards over the course of a year. For this exercise, we’ll take the number of stores and multiply it by the average number of shopping trips to each type of store over the course of a year. Do you want to guess at the total number? When adding it all up, 2,553,013,130 active DIY consumers walked through the doors of their local independent home improvement retailer last year and made a purchase. That’s over 2.5 billion customer transactions, or “2.5 Billion Served” in McDonalds lingo, and it’s up from 2.3 billion last year. According to industry reports, Home Depot had 1.3 billion transactions last year, while Lowe’s had 813 million, for a total of just over 2.1 billion transactions.

So when you take a good hard look at the numbers, independent retailers represent a consumer market bigger than Home Depot and Lowe’s combined. Instead of thinking of independents as “small business” you need to recognize just how big they are collectively when compared to the big boxes.

Protecting and growing the independent segment of the home improvement industry is the mission of the North American Retail Hardware Association (NRHA). We not only represent these 36,000 independent home improvement retailers, we are these retailers, and we’re here to say that we offer a clear shopping advantage over the big boxes—from the superior service and know-how when you need help with your project to the convenience of having roughly nine times the number of locations across the country. This doesn’t even take into consideration the extent to which we support our local communities … communities we have helped build and grow for centuries … communities we call home.

We realize that consumers’ needs continue to change, and we’re embracing this change. We know you rely more and more on the Internet to conduct research for your home improvement projects. That’s why last year NRHA launched PlanItDIY.com as a resource for consumers searching online for how-to information, inspiration and expert project advice from a trusted source. It’s really just an extension of what you find when you shop at your local independent home improvement retailer. If you can’t find your local store, simply click here and enter your ZIP code to get a listing of all the independent home improvement retailers in your area.

The numbers don’t lie. When you add it up the advantages of shopping at your local independent home improvement retailer are more numerous today than ever before. Besides, more than 2.5 billion consumers can’t be wrong.

Bill Lee
President and CEO
North American Retail Hardware Association (NRHA)