So what product categories are seeing the biggest gains and the biggest declines in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic? Some gainers are obvious, like everyone’s favorite, TP, as well as cold and flu medicine, food and beverage, personal protection items and cleaning/sanitizing products.
To go a little deeper into the coronavirus effect, Stackline compiled a list of the 100 fastest-growing and 100 slowest-growing product categories in ecommerce during March 2020, compared to March 2019. The big gainer was disposable gloves, up 670%, followed by bread machines at 652% and cough/cold at 535%. Surprisingly, hand sanitizer was #12, up 262%, and toilet paper was way down at #24, at +190% – perhaps because neither was anywhere to be found after the first week of March.
The top declining categories were suitcases and briefcases, both down 77%, followed by cameras and men’s swimwear, both down 64% – although I’m not sure how many guys are buying trunks in March anyway! These were followed in order by bridal clothing (-63%), men’s formal wear (-62%) and woman’s swimwear (-59%). Sensing a trend here.
Stackline came up with the list by monitoring daily search volume, prices, sales, ratings and more on 400 million products listed across many of the largest ecommerce retailers in the U.S., representing more than $82 billion in ecommerce sales.
You can see the entire list of top 100 gainers and decliners here:
