NAICS 41422Industry · 5-digitnational market

Household appliance merchant wholesalers

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling large and small, new, electric, household appliances. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 207
Under 10 employeesA: 64%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–49244%

5–94120%

10–192412%

20–493316%

50–9973%

100–199105%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 207 Canadian establishments with employees, 64% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario10953%

Quebec3919%

British Columbia3617%

Alberta168%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020

82.8%

1 year

64.3%

3 years

51.2%

5 years

34.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 414, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 414 Personal and household goods merchant wholesalers

The distributor's margin is squeezed from both sides as brands sell direct. Exclusive lines are the defensible position.

Who sets the price: Brands above, retailers below; the wholesaler holds neither.
The software it runs on: Distribution ERP, EDI and marketplace integrations.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4142 Home entertainment equipment and household appliance merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4142

Appliance & Consumer Electronics DistributorOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

A distributor of televisions, audio and household appliances stands between a handful of global manufacturers and a handful of national retailers, and the Canadian figures show what that position has been worth. The group's revenue was $10.1B in 2012 and $11.0B in 2024 [A] — 9% growth in nominal dollars across twelve years in which Canadian wholesale trade as a whole grew 72%, from $865B to $1,487B [A]. It earns a 23.2% gross margin and a 4.5% operating profit [A], the thinnest of the consumer-goods wholesale groups in this batch, and only 347 establishments remain, more than half of them in Ontario where the manufacturers keep their Canadian sales offices. The mechanism is not mysterious. The major brands sell direct to the major retailers, and what is left for an independent is the tail: regional appliance dealers and builders served on thin terms, premium or niche lines a big brand's sales company does not bother with, and parts. Those niches are real, but each depends on a supply agreement the manufacturer can end, and none of them is growing the pie. An entrant would be financing inventory of fast-depreciating goods to take share of a market that, after inflation, is materially smaller than it was a decade ago. No Canadian company in this group discloses anything, and the only anchor is American: Almo, the largest US national distributor of consumer appliances and electronics, earned US$75M of EBITA on US$1.3B of revenue before DCC bought it for about US$610M — 5.8%, on the best-run version of this business [A]. The agency's own series carries the cut, and it is enough to say the growth is not there.

NAICS 41425 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Distribution ERP, EDI and marketplace integrations.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 41422. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
414220	Household appliance merchant wholesalers	207	screened at 4142

Alongside it, under 4142 Home entertainment equipment and household appliance merchant wholesalers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
41421	Home entertainment equipment merchant wholesalers	140	screened at 4142