The good folks over at Internet Retailer rolled out their 2009 tell all of the top 500 retailers at the IR show in Boston last month.

We here at Sitebrand have been around for 9+ years, and now have a nice reference library of past editions collecting dust. The inner nerd in me took it upon himself to do a little extra data analysis above and beyond the call of duty to see what we can deduce from building some year over year, rank over rank metrics.

Using a trusty spreadsheet, I built up the numbers in a number of ways.

Let’s start by considering some trends within each year; comparing same year revenue numbers for #500, to #400, to #300 and so on. It is fascinating to see that every year, the delta between the same year hundreds keeps widening at a staggering rate. Pretty cool. Explosive growth, year over year up through the ranks.

The numbers start to tell a different story though when same rank revenue is trended year to year (i.e. Comparing position #500 revenue for the past 4 years, position #400 for the past 4 years, etc) …not specific company revenue, but the reported revenue for the same IR position, year over year. Confused?

Sitebrand's Dan Auns has found some unexpected trends over the last few years from IR500 reports

Knowing that the company in position #1 has remained the same for all 4 years, let us forget the fact that every year a different company occupies every other position. Let’s pretend that my year to year report is for the same 5 companies, year over year, and compare position x00 year over year for the past 4 years…

Almost across the board, the year over year growth rates have been declining year over year since 2005. The two exceptions occur at either end of the report, the #1 position and the #500 position.

The #1 position posted 26%, 38%, and 30% growth.
The #500 position posted 71%, 16%, and 41% growth. Growth across the board, but all over the map and unpredictable at best.

The trend for positions 100, 200, 300, and 400 show a -7% to -9% decline in same rank revenue growth year over year, for the past 4 years. Not exactly the results I was expecting.

Let’s keep in mind that these are growth rates, +20% growth no matter how you slice it is exceptional, and all stats can be spun if you look hard enough (Most often are). What do you make of these trends? Shoot me an email and I will share my workbook with you to take a closer look.