E-Commerce for the Lighting Industry

The report analyses the development of E-commerce sales in the lighting fixtures industry to nowadays and future prospects considering the diffusion and the new possibilities opened by digital technologies and providing market data on the incidence of e-commerce sales in the lighting fixtures industry, by country/geographical area (EMEA, America, Asia) and by segment (Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Outdoor lighting).

Companies showed in the report include: lighting manufacturers selling through e-commerce, E-tailers, Distributors with e-commerce operations (bricks & clicks) and wholesalers. Short profiles of leading E-commerce players, sales data and market shares are included.

Countries and geographical area analysed: EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), North America (mainly the United States), Asia (mainly China, India and Japan).

The Report “E-commerce for the lighting fixtures industry” has been carried out using the following tools:

• field research including direct interviews with leading lighting manufacturers and distributors operating in the e-commerce business;
• desk analysis and comparison for a sample of over 200 companies using e-commerce (mainly US, Europe and China based);
• analysis of databases concerning lighting fixtures sector worldwide;
• processing of official statistics and various e-commerce related sources worldwide.

If we include both B2C and B2B business, the e-commerce market for lighting fixtures worldwide is estimated to account for over 7% of total lighting fixtures sales, worth about USD 9.1 billion at retail prices.

Residential and commercial lighting segments are the ones that registered the higher incidence in the ecommerce transactions.

The penetration of e-commerce is higher in North America (10%). In few years, e-commerce in China developed at a very rapid path and reached a similar penetration level than the one of North America. E-commerce penetration in the lighting fixtures business stood at around 7% in Europe in 2020 with the United Kingdom and Germany to be largest marketplaces.

Looking at the different distributors the study estimated that almost 34% of worldwide e-commerce sales is in the hand of wholesalers (for example, Rexel operates dozens of e-commerce sites throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific). The fastest growing category is the E-tailers (+24% since 2018), which includes global e-commerce platforms (like the giant Amazon and Alibaba), specialist lighting webstores (like Lampenwelt) and furniture webstores (like Wayfair). Only few manufacturers operate their own web shop.