Top Retailers List

What happens when a recession ends and (seemingly) nobody recovers? Retailers may be discovering the answer to this disturbing question right now.

A sluggish economy can’t be good for office supply stores, and this was certainly true in 2009. Both OfficeMax and Office Depot reported sales declines in their North American operations, though Staples managed to post a 3.5 percent increase. Staples also differentiated itself on the expansion front, growing its North American store count (1,555) by 2.1 percent while OfficeMax’s domestic chain strength declined 1 percent and Office Depot shed 8.8 percent of U.S. locations.

Safeway, SUPERVALU and Kroger once constituted the Big Three of supermarketing. But Kroger has left its erstwhile mates in the dust — even as Walmart zoomed past all three to become the nation’s largest seller of groceries.

Safeway was not very positive in its outlook for this year, warning that earnings might not meet expectations. This comes as the company nears the end of a seven-year campaign to remodel stores to the Lifestyle prototype (nearly $1 billion has been budgeted for store makeovers this year).

The early indications are encouraging, but will the recovery in the home improvement field be sustained?

Both The Home Depot and Lowe’s have raised sales and earnings forecasts for 2010 after improved performance in bellwether markets like Florida and California, where sales had plummeted in the wake of the housing and mortgage crises. The Home Depot’s same-store sales rose 3.3 percent in the first three months of this year, topping Lowe’s 2.4 percent gains — the first positive quarterly same-store sales movement for Lowe’s in nearly four years.