Category: mapping

US Retailers by Revenue: $2.7 Trillion in Sales on a Map

As another year comes to an end, we took a look back to see which stores competing for business did the best. Thanks to company reports of retail sales (all of which are in the billions, by the way), we know the top 100 stores of the year. The retailers that made the most include Walmart and Amazon (unsurprisingly), though one wholesale warehouse ranked in the top ten with just under 530 stores. To put it in perspective, the majority of the top ten companies of 2019, and the top 100 for that matter made their billions of dollars in sales by owning at least 1,700 stores throughout the country. This just goes to show that more stores don’t mean more sales. Or maybe the stores that didn’t make the cut aren’t in the right market because there are categories of stores that make more cash than others, like supermarkets and fast food places. There are also states and cities where more successful stores operate their headquarters. Find out where in the U.S. the most top stores are based and more as you continue reading about the top 100 stores of 2019.

View Top 100 Stores of 2019 in a full screen map

The map above depicts Kantar’s data for the top stores of the year in grouping columns, the most useful of which are the 2018 retail sales (billions), the store category, and the number of stores.

Billion-Dollar Stores

Of the 100 top stores of 2019, ten stand out the most in retail sales.

Rank Company Category 2018 retail sales (billions) 2018 stores Headquarters City Headquarters State
1 Walmart General Retailer $387.66 5,263 Bentonville AR
2 Amazon.com E-commerce $120.93 490 Seattle WA
3 The Kroger Co. Supermarket $119.70 3,035 Cincinnati OH
4 Costco Membership-Only Warehouse Club $101.43 523 Issaquah WA
5 Walgreens Boots Alliance Drug Store $98.39 9,451 Deerfield IL
6 The Home Depot Home Improvement $97.27 1,969 Atlanta GA
7 CVS Health Corporation Drug Store $83.79 9,954 Woonsocket RI
8 Target General Retailer $74.48 1,844 Minneapolis MN
9 Lowe’s Companies Home Improvement $64.09 1,723 Mooresville NC
10 Albertsons Companies Supermarket $59.71 2,249 Boise ID

The #1 top store of 2019 is Walmart. The general retailer made $387.66 billion in sales throughout its 5,263 stores this year. Walmart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The only other Arkansas-based stores to make the overall list of the 100 top stores are Dillards (#71) and Discount Tire (#91) but the #1 Walmart outearned them both by at least 63%. As for #2: it’s Amazon. The e-commerce giant brought in 120.93 billion dollars in 2019. The H.Q. is located in Seattle, Washington, and is only one of four top 100 companies to conduct business from the Evergreen State. Amazon’s 490 brick-and-mortar stores may come as a surpsie as we tend to think of the company as solely e-commerce. However, Amazon’s physical stores include Whole Foods, Amazon Books, Amazon Go, AmazonFresh Pickup, Amazon Pop-Up stores, and all their package pickup locations.

Following Amazon is the U.S.’s largest supermarket chain: the Kroger Co. It’s one of eight Ohio-based retailers serving up top sales this year. Based out of Cincinnati, you may not immediately recognize the stores associated with The Kroger Co. As of 2019, The Kroger Co. owns Dillons, Food 4 Less, Fred Meyer, Fred Meyer Jewelers, Fry’s, Harris Teeter, Home Chef, King Soopers, the Little Clinic, Mariano’s QFC, Ralphs, Roundy’s, Ruler Foods, Smith’s, and Vitacost. All that to say, the Kroger Co. and its 3,035 stores made $119.70 billion in retail sales — just 1.23 billion less than Amazon.

Costco is next. The wholesale warehouse best known for its free samples made $101.43 billion in sales last year. With just 523 stores, Costco is the only retailer other than Amazon (though Amazon makes most of its sales online, not in-store) to rank in the top ten with less than 1,500 stores. Costco is similar to Amazon in that its headquarters are located in Washington, though in a city called Issaquah. Costco is also the last retailer to hit over 100 billion dollars in sales on the list.

Walgreens Boots Alliance comes in at #5. The drugstore’s 9,451 stores made just under $99 billion throughout the year. One of eight top retailers based in Illinois, Walgreens (H.Q. in Deerfield) owns the most stores of the top ten up until this point. The Home Depot, CVS Health Corporation, Target, Lowe’s Companies, and Albertsons Companies round out the top ten retailers of the year. Each of these successful stores earned at least $59 billion and they own over 1,000 stores across the country.

More Stores Don’t Mean More Sales

We noted both Amazon and Costco made over 100 billion dollars with only 490 and 523 stores respectively. This just goes to show that more stores don’t mean more sales. Other examples include Ikea. With just 49 stores, Ikea still ranks at #72. It beat GameStop, which has over 3,800 stores throughout the U.S. and the furniture emporium is also neck-in-neck with Dillards’ 5,371 stores. Additionally, Apple Stores/iTunes managed to rank at #11 despite only having 271 stores. Both Macy’s and H.E. Butt Grocery also have well-under 900 stores yet they still make it in the top 20.

On the other hand, we have Subway. The sandwich shop has the largest amount of stores out of all 100 companies: 26,932. Yet, it’s only ranked at #43. The lowest-ranked company with the most stores appears to be the Shell Oil Company. Even with 4,406 stores, Shell only ranks at #99.

Common Cash Categories

We sorted the top stores of 2019 into 12 distinct categories. The category of store that appears most frequently appears on the map is apparel. Seventeen apparel stores are ranked within the top 100 stores of 2019. The second most common category is restaurants. There are fifteen of these throughout the map. McDonald’s is the highest-ranking restaurant on the list at #14, which is not bad for a business dedicated to fast and cheap food. Yum! Brands ranks second in fast food (#24) followed by Starbucks, and Subway, and 11 others.

Supermarkets also make a lot of sales. There are 14 on the map, including the Kroger Co. and Albertsons Companies, which are the two supermarkets making the most. While there weren’t enough dollar stores and related companies on the map to merit a mention above, we thought it was notable that these companies where everything is usually $1 or less appear on this list twice and quite high in the ranks. Dollar General, for example, is ranked at #18 and made $25.63 billion throughout the year. Not far behind was the Dollar Tree. As the #21 top store of 2019, the Dollar Tree brought in about $22.48 billion. Absent from the top 100 is the 99 Cent Store.

Successful States & Cities

A number of top stores are headquartered in Texas: 11 to be exact. The ranks of these Texas-based companies range from #20 (H.E. Butt Grocery) to #99 (Shell Oil Company). Dallas, Texas is the only city in the U.S. where four top stores have headquarters. 7-Eleven, AT&T, Army & Air Force Exchange Service, and Neiman Marcus are all successful companies based in Dallas.

In addition to Texas, many top retailers are based in California (nine), most of which are located in San Francisco. There are also eight top stores working out of both Ohio and Illinois, and six in Pensylvania, though no city in Ohio, Illinois, nor Pensylvania is home to more than two top companies. Seattle is home to three of Washington’s four top companies. That puts the Emerald City second to Dallas for the number of companies in the top 100. San Francisco and New York also have three companies each.

In addition to company reports of retail sales, the end of a calendar year also brings fun events for the family, like holiday light displays around the snow globe and the ability to map your holiday cards list. But the end of the year also means getting organized for the new year. If you have a bunch of business data you need to dive into, let BatchGeo help you use an Excel pivot table to count and sum values or teach you about Excel data visualization examples to make sure you start the year off right.

Latitude and Longitude in Excel: Calculate Distance, Convert Degrees, and Geocode Addresses

If you have a long list of geographic coordinates to work with, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is sure to be useful. There are three basic Excel tools that can work for you, no matter how you want to manipulate your geographic coordinates. You’ll need to know how to calculate the distance between two latitude and longitude points, how to convert latitude and longitude data to decimal degrees, and finally, how to geocode latitudes and longitudes.

How to Calculate the Distance Between Two Coordinates in Excel

In an example of how to calculate the distance between two coordinates in Excel, we’ll seek to measure the great circle distance. We’ll note that latitude and longitude are denoted in degrees, minutes and seconds.

Convert Latitude and Longitude to Decimal Degrees in Excel

Everything, including something as complicated as degrees, minutes, and seconds, can be converted into decimals. The degrees part remains the same, but minutes and seconds need to be converted into their percentage of a degree and combined. There are 60 minutes in a degree and 60 seconds in a minute (which means 3,600 seconds in a degree). Therefore, divide minutes by 60 and seconds by 3,600.

The overall formula:

Total Degrees (in the decimal form) = Deg + [Mins / 60] + [Seconds / 3600]

…So About That Distance

Now that you have the latitude and longitude values in decimals, you just face the equation for the nautical miles between Timbuktu and Casablanca, noted underneath.

Nautical Miles= ACOS [(sin(Lat_place_1*PI()/180)*sin(Lat_place_2*PI()/180)+

cos(Lat_place_1*PI()/180)*cos(Lat_place_2*PI()/180)*

cos(Lon_place_2*PI()/180-Lon_place_1*PI()/180)) ] *3443.8985

That three thousand number, in the end, is the radius of Earth, in, Nautical Miles. Even if you were to substitute it with the radius of a sphere, assuming the Earth is spherical, at 3437.7468 NM, you will not be near the real, accurate distance.

Figure: You only have to enter that formula into EXCEL ONE time.
Figure: The 4476 number is the distance in Nautical Miles. The decimals are pretty much useless since you know it’s an approximation.

Geocode Latitude and Longitude in Excel

Geocoding is the conversion of street addresses to latitude and longitude data that can be mapped. Now, there are two ways to geocode latitude and longitude from an Excel spreadsheet: the hard way and the easy way.

We’ll cover the hard way first, which is what you’ll need if you require the coordinates to live in your Excel document. You’ll need to write the Visual Basic (VBA) script to make a call to an external geocoder, or find the code elsewhere, such as this GitHub repo. There are a number of geocoder APIs and some geocoders are faster than others.

The Google Maps Geocoding API is a common choice and this is the API we’ll call in the easy option. However, it also can work directly within Excel. Armed with the code you’ve written or discovered, here are the steps to deploy geocoding within Excel.

Step 1: Find the Developer tab in your version of Excel.

Step 2: Look for the “Visual Basic” tab. This opens the development window.

Step 3: Insert —> Module. The new module will hold your function.

Step 4: Here is where you copy and paste your code.

Step 5: We need to add references now. So, Tools —> References. Make sure to check the Microsoft XML v6.0. CLICK OK.

Step 6: Press CTRL / CMD + S. Save as type —> Excel Add-In. Now you get to name your function. The extension has to be .xlam. Time to close all Excel files.

Step 7: Open a new file. File —> Options —> Add-Inns. In the Manage box, choose Excel-Add Ins.

Step 8: Press Go. Choose your function in the window that appears by ticking in the box. Press OK.

Step 9: VOILA. Now you could just use the new function you created, like any other function.

After you are done retrieving the values, copy and paste them elsewhere, off of the sheet with the calculations. Then delete the function calls because otherwise when you reopen this file, the Google API will start to be pinged again. That will eat up several minutes before the file is open. To optimize Google resource usage, take a 10-second break between addresses.

That’s a lot of steps, and assumes you’ve found some code to try out. Next, we’ll see the easier way to geocode your Excel data. It’s fast and reliable, but it won’t import the coordinates into your Excel file. On the other hand, the excel geocoding tool is copy-paste simple and gets you an interactive map.

Create a Map with Excel

There are a number of ways to create maps with Excel data. Perhaps the easiest is to just copy and paste your spreadsheet data into our map-making tool. Doing so turns your Excel document into a beautiful, interactive map like the one below.

View Example Latitude/Longitude Map in a full screen map

To make your own map based on latitude and longitude coordinates, separate the coordinates into their own columns within your spreadsheet.

Then, select and copy the rows and columns of your spreadsheet (Ctrl+C command or Cmd+C on Mac) and navigate to batchgeo.com. Paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V on Mac) in your data, and you’re done!

Whether you want to make a latitude and longitude map or create your own virtual wedding guide for your guests, BatchGeo provides a free and easy way to make beautiful web maps that are ready to be saved and shared.

Build a Google Maps Store Locator Without Code

Store locators have been a staple of the Internet almost since its inception, but they’re still difficult to build yourself. Set that programming lesson aside and see a quick way to create a locator for multiple locations of a store front, business, office (or anything for that matter) for your website. At BatchGeo, we’ve updated our store locator creator to provide an even easier way for your visitors to find the locations they seek.

If you try to create something like this map yourself, you’ll spend a lot of time reading tutorials and learning to write code for the Google Maps API. Instead, we let you copy and paste a list of addresses and we do the rest.

Enable Store Locator Mode on Your Map

Use our store locator tool to create a map with all the features you’d want in a Google Map. The tool will quickly geocode every address, turning each into coordinates to plot on a map. Then we create marker icons for every location. You can include the name for every store and any other data (such as the telephone number, hours, and more) in your spreadsheet. When you click a location, you can see the additional information about each place.

You can tune your map with various options, but here is the fastest way to create a store location map:

  1. Copy and paste your addresses into the map data tool
  2. Click “Map Now” to begin geocoding
  3. Click “Save & Continue”
  4. Select the “Store Locator” option and click “Save Map”

Now you’ll have a map that shows all your store locations visually, as well as in a browsable list to the left of the map. Your visitors can click on a map marker icon or any name in the list to open a box with additional data. Or, they can use the search at the top to find their nearest location.

Embed Your Store Locator on Your Website

Your store locator map takes minutes to create versus hours or weeks if you wrote the code yourself. You can send visitors to its unique web URL to quickly find nearby locations. Even better, make the map part of your website by embedding it like we did at the top of this page.

Again, it’s as easy as copy and paste. You’ll just need to locate the Embed Code while editing your map:

  1. Find the email we sent with your link to edit your map
  2. Click on the embed code field and copy the contents
  3. Paste the embed code into your website HTML or content management system

The embed code will look something like this:

<p><iframe src="https://batchgeo.com/map/tesla-dealers" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="550" style="border:1px solid #aaa;"></iframe></p><p><small>View <a href="https://batchgeo.com/map/tesla-dealers">Tesla Dealerships and Galleries</a> in a full screen map</small></p>

When this code is embedded in your website, you will have a fully functional, interactive store locator map.

Use a Store Locator in Data View Mode

While the store locator allows users to browse locations by name, as well as on the map, you may prefer to only provide a visual representation. To remove the list from the left side of your store locator, you can switch the map to Data View mode. Even better, your map will remain functional as a store locator. Your visitors can click the marker icons and search for locations.

Use these steps to create a store location map without the list:

  1. Copy and paste your addresses into the map data tool
  2. Click “Map Now” to begin geocoding
  3. Click “Save & Continue”
  4. Select the “Data View” option and click “Save Map”

If you’ve previously created your map in Store Locator mode, you can simply switch its mode. Edit your map (look in your email for the special link) and toggle between Store Locator mode and Data View mode.

Add a Search Box Outside Your Map

While every store locator map made with BatchGeo comes with its own search functionality, you may prefer to include a search box elsewhere on your site. Similar to embedding your map, we provide the HTML needed to create a search form that will open directly in your map.

You’ll just need to locate the Locator Code while editing your map:

  1. Find the email we sent with your link to edit your map
  2. Click on the locator code field and copy the contents
  3. Paste the embed code into your website HTML or content management system

The form code will look something like this:

&lt;form action=&quot;https://batchgeo.com/map/"><input type=&quot;hidden&quot; name=&quot;i&quot; value=&quot;tesla-dealers&quot;&gt;&lt;label&gt;Search for nearest location &lt;input type=&quot;text&quot; name=&quot;q&quot; value=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/label&gt;&lt;input type=&quot;submit&quot; value=&quot;Search&quot;&gt;&lt;/form&gt;

When your visitor submits this form, it will open in your store locator with the search pre-populated.

Create a Map of Your Retailers, Sellers, and Other Locations

Store locators are a great way to share all kinds of locations. Even if you don’t operate a chain of stores yourself, you may have retailers who carry your merchandise. You can create a map of retailers and sellers and enable Store Locator mode to make it easily searchable.

BatchGeo will map any list of locations. Create a map today!