Good sales results featured in this year’s FMCG retailer ranking

Trade magazin traditionally publishes its FMCG retailer ranking on the first workday in June. The good sales results of former years improved further last year. Although there was no change in the Top 3 and the same 11 retailers are featured in the ranking as last year, more retailers made their sales data public than ever before. Based on the data that they provided, we can say that 2018 was an exceptionally good year for FMCG retailers and every chain featured in the ranking increased sales in comparison with the previous year.

Zsuzsanna Hermann
managing director-editor-in-chief
Trade magazin

As for the future, we are still optimistic, although perhaps a bit less than we were last year…Rising salaries had an impact on the good sales results. However, the data also indicate that the number of shops is decreasing fast. Unfortunately the workforce shortage and growing salaries forced many small shops to go out of business last year.

The numbers indicate that discount supermarkets were the best-performing retail channel in 2018. There was only one change in the positions of retailers in the ranking in comparison with last year, and this was the result of discount supermarkets strengthening their positions: Lidl stepped a place up to No.4, overtaking CBA. It was also the first time that not only Lidl, but also Penny sent their sales data to us – we hope that next year Aldi will join them, too

Just like in the year before last, drugstores kept on strengthening in 2018. Last year dm opened one and Rossmann opened 10 new drugstores, and consequently they saw their sales strengthen significantly. Since those retailers can make it to the ranking that realise minimum gross sales of HUF 50 billion, it is quite sure that Müller will be on our list next year as the third drugstore chain.

Hungarian-owned retail chains lost many stores, but most of these weren’t their own, they were justly loosely connected to them. In the case of Reál this trend was clearly visible. I hope that this year will be just as good sales-wise as 2018 was, and the consumption growth will continue, because rising salaries create the background for this. Still, we must also listen to those experts who are predicting a slowing down of the economy, so that our expectations won’t be too high and we will be happy about any sales result if it is positive. //