Private brand sales hit record

RangeMe highlights emerging global buyer trends

RangeMe’s Retail Recap 2022 report finds that coffee, candy and mushrooms were top-of-mind among retail buyers within the last year.

In 2022, private label sales hit a new record, according to the Private Label Manufacturers Association.

Within the last year, sales jumped 11.3% to $228.6 billion in all outlets in the United States for the 52 weeks ending Jan. 1, 2023.

Due to the increase in performance, store brands also grew nearly twice the rate of national brands, which were up just 6.1% in dollar sales, according to the organization.

“The store brands business is booming,” said PLMA president Peggy Davies. “Last year’s record sales and double-digit growth reflect the strong consumer demand for store brands. Shoppers are filling their baskets with great-tasting, innovative and highquality store brand foods, beverages, nonfoods, household goods and many other categories.”

Dollar shares increased 18.9% from 18.2% in 2021 and unit shares grew 20.5% from $19.9%. The study notes that a reason for the growth was the inflationary environment that motivated more shoppers to try, buy, like and remain loyal to store brands because of the quality they provide.

While private brand unit sales slipped by 1% in 2022, they outperformed national brand unit sales, which dropped -4.1%.

Of the 17 departments IRI tracks, 16 showed store brand growth. Numerous categories even had double-digit sales gains. The fastest-growing segments are beverages, up 19% to $12 billion; deli-prepared foods, 17% to $5.9 billion; refrigerated foods, 17% to $47.4 billion; liquor, 15.6% to $62 million; general food, 14% to $38.6 billion; floral, 13.5% to $883 million; bakery, 12.6% to $8.4 billion; produce, 11.9% to $13.5 billion and deli meat, 10% to $1.7 billion.

Strong sales were also reported in general merchandise, up 9% to $27.7 billion; frozen foods, 8.2% to $17.7 billion; deli cheese, 5.5% to $754 million; meat, 5% to $26.5 billion; health care products, 3% to $17.6 billion, beauty, 2.7% to $3.7 billion; and homecare, 2% to $2.7 billion.

“When it comes to quality, value, taste and performance, store brands can’t be beat,” Davies said.

The report, which highlights trends among the activity of national and international buyers on the RangeMe platform, also tracks keywords and certification searched, most visited collections and engagement with products and brands.

“The products buyers are searching for now are those that will be on the shelves in the coming months and years,” said Nicky Jackson, founder of RangeMe. “By analyzing the buyer activity on RangeMe, we get a look at what will be trending next in the fast-moving consumer goods arena.”

Coffee was the most popular keyword of buyers in 2022, garnering 19.4% of all searches, which also reflected new trends in the category—cold brew, fair trade, functional coffee and coffee accessories. Just behind coffee, representing 18.4% of keyword search terms was candy, a category that includes some of the top-performing brands on RangeMe based on overall buyer activity and engagement.

Mushroom, on the other hand, has an 18.3% search volume, which searched in the context of several different categories across the food, beverage and health and beauty care categories, such as “mushroom coffee” and “mushroom supplements.”

Other popular search terms included toys at 10.5%, water at 9.6%, pet at 8.3%, sunscreen at 8%, and candles at 7.5%.

Search terms varied among the international markets analyzed. Popular U.K. RangeMe search terms include porridge (41.1%), tiles (21.4%), makeup (19.6%) and baby (17.9%). For APAC buyers, salad dressing was the most popular search (28.6%), followed by bacon, wet wipes (23.5%), and acne (20.2%). In the Netherlands, lozenges topped buyer searches at 41.5%, followed by sun care (27.2%), keto (19%) and dog cookies (12.2%).