NAICS 444110Canadian industry · 6-digitlocal market

Home centres

SoftwareBuilding Materials Dealer ERP 444

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing a general line of home repair and improvement materials and supplies, such as lumber, doors and windows, plumbing goods, electrical goods, floor coverings, tools, houseware, hardware, paint and wallpaper, and lawn and garden equipment and supplies. The merchandise lines are normally arranged in separate sections. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 1,971
Under 10 employeesA: 18%
Establishments · USA: 6,038
Employment · USA: 803,805
Payroll · USA: $23.6B

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

1–41538%

5–919710%

10–1941021%

20–4956729%

50–9930816%

100–19931416%

200–499221%

500+0—

Of 1,971 Canadian establishments with employees, 18% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Ontario56429%

Quebec49825%

British Columbia20510%

Alberta20010%

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

Retail Trade, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

72.3%

3 years

59.8%

5 years

44.2%

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.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 444, 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.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 444 Building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers

Independents survive on contractor trade, rural location and buying-group membership rather than on price.

Who sets the price: Big-box competitors on commodities; service on the rest.
The software it runs on: Retail and contractor-desk point of sale, often shared with the wholesale yard.

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 4441 Building material and supplies dealers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4441

Independent Building Supply YardOne thing must be true

binding constraint: capital intensity

The pre-screen called this a candidate, and the screen does not overturn it. The instructive figure is Lowe's round trip. It bought RONA in 2016 in a transaction valued at C$3.2B (US$2.4B), creating a 539-store Canadian business with about C$6B of pro forma revenue [A]; on 3 February 2023 it sold the whole Canadian retail business — RONA, Lowe's Canada, Réno-Dépôt and Dick's Lumber, corporate and dealer-owned — to Sycamore Partners for US$491M in cash plus contingent consideration first valued at $21M, having already written US$2,061M off the long-lived assets and booked a further US$421M loss on sale [A]. The business was less than 6% of Lowe's fiscal 2022 sales and cost it about 60 basis points of operating margin [A]. What that establishes is that national scale in Canadian home improvement was not worth what the best-capitalised entrant paid for it. What it does not establish is that the independent yard is a good business. Independents live on contractor trade — delivered lumber, the estimating desk, the house account — and rent their purchasing scale from dealer-owned buying groups, so the big box's cost advantage is narrower here than in most retail. But this is not a small shop: a quarter of Canadian establishments in the group employ twenty or more people. Entry is by buying an existing yard, and the price includes land, a delivery fleet and a full inventory; after closing, the owner finances his contractors' receivables through a housing cycle he does not control. That is the nearest thing to a cut, and the screen does not find it decisive. A full study would have to test what banner dealers actually change hands for, contractor-account losses through a rate cycle, and whether the succession wave shows up in buying-group membership. The ERP sold to these dealers is screened separately.

NAICS 44415 vendors named13 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.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 444 Building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers

Building Materials Dealer ERPOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Incumbent Epicor BisTrack and ECI Spruce

Two private-equity estates — Epicor and ECI — hold the lumber and building-materials yard, and both bought their way in rather than building. The buyer runs a yard, a delivery fleet and a credit book on one system, so the replacement risk is operational and the incumbent knows it. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 4443 vendors namedOpen →

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 Retail 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 sales supervisors One industry 84.7%

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 80.1%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 80%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 69.7%

Pharmacists and dietitians Mostly one sector 61%

Medical technologists and technicians One industry 23.6%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 18.7%

Cooks, butchers and bakers Mostly one sector 15.7%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 12.2%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 11.2%

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

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 8.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.7%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 6.6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 6%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 5.7%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5.4%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 5.3%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 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 →