Store brands had a record-breaking year as 2022 sales reached $228.6 billion, an increase of $23 billion over the prior year, according to data provided exclusively to PLMA by IRI. Overall dollar sales grew by 11.3%, nearly doubling national brands' 6% increase for the 52-week period ending January 1, 2023.
Store brand dollar share for 2022 came in at 18.9%, an increase over the 18.2% share in 2021 in all the major channels. Likewise, unit share was 20.5%, an increase over the 19.9% in 2021.
Growth was generated across the store. Of the 17 departments tracked by IRI, 16 of them showed store brand growth over the past year, with only tobacco declining. Beverages were the strongest category, adding 19.1% in dollar sales, followed by Deli Prepared (17.3%), Refrigerated (17.1%), Liquor (15.6%) and General Food (14%) rounding out the top five departments.
Sales increases were not limited to food. Non-food categories also showed robust growth. General Merchandise private label sales rose 9% as did the Health (3.1%), Beauty (2.7%) and Home Care (2.1%) departments. Combined the four departments had over $40 billion in total private label dollar sales.
While unit sales continued to decline for both national and store brands throughout 2022, store brands seem to be holding on to unit sales better than national brands. For all of 2022, national brand unit sales declined 4.1% while store brand unit sales decreased 1%.
Notably, in the last two months of the year, store brand unit sales growth turned positive, reaching plus 0.3% for both November and December while national brand unit sales continued to decline, by 4.4% and 3.7% respectively.
Later this month, PLMA will release its annual report, which will dive deeper into the historic year of private brand sales. The 2022 results are currently available for members at plma.com in the IRI Unify section, which also offers monthly sales updates on 317 categories, 967 subcategories and 17 departments.