Home Depot Towers Over a Redrawn Specialty-Retail Top Ten

The 2026 NRF and Kantar retail table ranks companies primarily by estimated U.S. retail sales over their latest 52- or 53-week periods and lists Home Depot at $141.12 billion, Lowe’s at $83.96 billion, Apple Stores / iTunes at $75.90 billion, Best Buy at $38.23 billion, Ace Hardware at $27.55 billion, Dick’s Sporting Goods at $20.20 billion, O’Reilly Auto Parts at $17.07 billion, AutoZone at $15.94 billion, Tractor Supply at $15.52 billion and Menards at $14.10 billion for 2025. Applying a non-apparel specialty-retail boundary to that table leaves Home Depot comfortably ahead of every other qualifying business.

The central result has not changed: home improvement still dominates the top of the specialty market. What has changed is the field around it—a consistent domestic-sales measure brings Apple’s own retail channels and the Ace Hardware network into the comparison, Dick’s now includes Foot Locker, and the former Bed Bath & Beyond store operation cannot simply be carried forward under its familiar name.

How this ranking defines specialty retail

There is no universally binding definition of a specialty retailer. For this ranking, the term covers businesses whose retail proposition is concentrated in a recognizable merchandise field or customer need: home improvement, consumer technology, hardware, sporting goods, automotive parts or rural-lifestyle supplies.

Specialty apparel chains are excluded to preserve the subject boundary of the earlier ranking. The list also leaves out supermarkets, department stores, warehouse clubs, pharmacies, telecom carriers, convenience stores, fuel-led businesses and broad discount chains. Some of those companies generate more sales than businesses included here, but they compete across a different retail scope.

The figures represent estimated U.S. retail sales, not consolidated corporate revenue. The underlying methodology removes non-retail operations where possible, can use systemwide sales for franchise organizations and relies partly on estimates derived from public disclosures. It therefore allows private businesses, cooperatives and public companies to appear in one comparison, but the amounts should not be treated as measures of profit, market value or worldwide scale.

Apple Stores / iTunes illustrates that distinction particularly clearly. Its placement concerns sales attributed to Apple’s physical and digital retail channels, not Apple’s total corporate revenue or all Apple products sold through carriers and independent retailers.

The ten largest qualifying retailers

1. Home Depot. The home-improvement retailer leads the selected group by a wide margin. Its broad project range and service to both household customers and building professionals give it a scale that narrower specialty formats do not match.
2. Lowe’s. Home Depot’s closest direct competitor holds second place. The size of both chains makes home improvement the defining category at the top of the ranking.
3. Apple Stores / iTunes. Apple’s channel-based entry sits close to Lowe’s and well above conventional consumer-electronics chains. Its inclusion reflects a definition that accepts vertically integrated brand retail alongside multibrand merchants.
4. Best Buy. Best Buy is the highest qualifying consumer-electronics chain after Apple’s attributed channels. Its position also marks a substantial break between the leading three operations and the rest of the selected field.
5. Ace Hardware. Ace achieves national hardware scale through a retailer-owned cooperative rather than a centrally owned big-box network. That difference is one reason a methodology capable of handling systemwide sales matters.
6. Dick’s Sporting Goods. Dick’s occupies the middle of the list after absorbing Foot Locker. The combined business spans sporting goods, athletic footwear and sneaker-focused retail banners, giving the current group a wider perimeter than the former standalone company.
7. O’Reilly Auto Parts. O’Reilly leads the two dedicated automotive-parts retailers in this selection. The company’s position reflects the large market for vehicle maintenance and repair outside dealership networks and general merchandisers.
8. AutoZone. AutoZone follows O’Reilly closely on the domestic-sales measure. Because this comparison focuses on U.S. retail activity, its place does not express the full size of its international business.
9. Tractor Supply. Tractor Supply focuses on rural-lifestyle customers through livestock and pet supplies, tools, seasonal goods, workwear and related merchandise. The range is broad, but the customer proposition remains more specialized than that of a general discount chain.
10. Menards. The privately held home-improvement retailer completes the selection. Its presence gives home improvement and hardware three places in the top ten and reinforces the category’s unusual weight.

Acquisition changed the meaning of Dick’s sales

Dick’s current position is not directly comparable with a historical standalone figure. The company’s September 8, 2025 transaction notice documents the completed acquisition of Foot Locker, while the current retail table explicitly reflects that purchase in the fiscal-year 2025 result.

The distinction matters because an acquisition enlarges the business being measured. A higher position produced by combining two operations is not the same as organic growth from an unchanged store and banner portfolio, even though both effects can raise reported or estimated sales.

Why Bed Bath & Beyond is no longer comparable

The Bed Bath & Beyond name survived, but the operating business behind it changed fundamentally. Overstock’s June 28, 2023 transaction account covers specified intellectual-property assets acquired through a bankruptcy-court-supervised process and says that store leases, inventory, warehousing and logistics infrastructure were excluded.

That separation prevents the former big-box chain’s historical sales from being treated as if they belonged to an uninterrupted present-day retailer. The continuing brand and the former physical-store organization are different operating configurations, so placing the old chain in a current ranking would produce a misleading comparison.

What the ordering shows

Home Depot’s lead over Lowe’s is $57.16 billion using the table’s inputs, while Lowe’s leads Apple Stores / iTunes by $8.06 billion. The distance from Apple’s attributed channels to Best Buy is $37.67 billion, creating a clear top tier before the ranking reaches conventional electronics, hardware, sporting-goods and automotive-parts chains.

Home improvement dominates the top, but methodology and corporate perimeter have greater influence in the middle. Cooperatives, private companies, brand-owned channels and acquired banners can all be compared here because the measure is domestic retail sales. A ranking based on global corporate revenue, public filings alone or profitability would answer a different question and could produce a different order.

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