Among the top car audio retailers, Walmart was one of the biggest losers last year, with sales falling 12.5 percent to $503.1 million, down from $575 million, according to the TWICE Top 25 Car Electronics Retailers Report.
The top 3 car audio giants, Best Buy, Amazon and Walmart together represented $1.84 billion in 12 volt retail sales last year.
Amazon sales were estimated at $582.9 million, down 2.8 percent from last year and Best Buy’s 12 volt sales were estimated at $754.1 million down about 5 percent, according to the report, conducted by The Stevenson Company.
It’s interesting that while many of the big mass merchants saw a decline in sales, many of the car audio specialists posted increases of 2 to 6 percent.
Six years ago, the Big 3 registered at sales of $2.6 billion on the TWICE chart. Best Buy has been the hardest hit in recent years, with sales dropping by half since 2008 from over $1.4 billion. Walmart, back in 2008, had sales of almost $800 million, so it has seen a 37 percent drop since then.
Amazon’s sales, by contrast, have grown by a third since 2008, when they were $393 million.
As always, there is a lot of insight in the TWICE report, which is available for purchase here.
Makes sense. As more cars that are easy to work on (DIY friendly) head to the junkyard, the mass retailers’ sales will continue to slide.