Average ecommerce vs retail revenue share by vertical, 2026: 10 public consumer brands, 1 clean disclosure

If you run a $5M to $50M ecommerce brand, the question "should we open a store" usually arrives between board meeting two and board meeting three. The first answer most founders find is a calculator on a real-estate blog. The second is a McKinsey deck about omnichannel. Neither tells you what share of revenue publicly traded consumer brands actually pull from their own retail stores. We pulled FY2025 10-Ks and 20-Fs for 10 public consumer brands to answer the question directly. The headline finding: only one company (Levi Strauss, 33%) discloses own-retail-store revenue share cleanly. Everyone else either lumps stores and e-commerce into a single DTC bucket or does not disclose at all. Underneath the disclosure gap is a clean three-tier ladder that tells you where your business should actually sit.

What public 10-Ks actually disclose about own-retail-store revenue

The disclosure gap is the most important finding in the data, because it shapes what every other benchmark you read online is actually measuring.

Of 10 public US-listed and dual-listed consumer brands we pulled, exactly one (Levi Strauss) discloses own-retail-store revenue share as a clean percentage. Levi's FY2025 10-K (filed 2026-01-28) reports company-operated brick-and-mortar retail stores at 33% of net revenues, up from 32% in FY2024 and 30% in FY2023, across 1,231 stores in 38 countries.

Every other brand in the sample blurs the line. Lululemon reports a single consolidated segment (no retail-vs-ecommerce dollar split disclosed) but does report 811 stores at $1,426 sales per square foot. Warby Parker (323 stores, $871.9M revenue) calls it "holistic vision care" and reports as one segment. Birkenstock (62% wholesale / 38% DTC) and On Holding (58.2% wholesale / 41.8% DTC) both disclose DTC as a single line that includes e-commerce and own-retail combined.

The pattern is structural, not accidental. The higher the wholesale share, the cleaner the disclosure. The higher the own-retail share, the murkier. From an investor-relations standpoint, "DTC growth" reads better as a single number than "store growth held flat while e-commerce dropped." The disclosure gap is a feature for the IR team and a bug for any operator trying to benchmark.

The data table below shows what each brand discloses and what they do not.

The three tiers: digitally-native (0-10%), omnichannel (25-40%), store-led (40%+)

Once you triangulate around the disclosure gap, a clean three-tier ladder shows up.

Tier 1 (digitally-native, 0% to 10% own-retail). FIGS at 0% disclosed (5 Community Hubs framed as brand-awareness vehicles, not a revenue channel). e.l.f. Beauty at 0% (76% wholesale through Target, Walmart, Amazon, Sephora and 24% e-commerce, zero owned stores). YETI under 5% (27 owned stores against 1.7 billion dollars revenue, with Amazon Marketplace driving DTC growth). Allbirds declining (4 stores left globally after Q1 2026 closures). The operator pattern: stores are a brand vehicle or absent. Capital is concentrated in customer acquisition through digital and wholesale.

Tier 2 (omnichannel premium, 25% to 40% own-retail). Levi Strauss at 33% disclosed (1,231 stores, the cleanest data point in the entire ladder). Birkenstock at 38% DTC including e-commerce (which Eightx estimates puts own-retail in the high teens to mid-20s once e-commerce is stripped out). On Holding at 41.8% DTC including e-commerce (similar pattern). Crocs at an estimated 12% to 18% own-retail (514 stores, of which 269 are outlets, where the merchandising mode is closer to inventory clearance than full-price retail). The operator pattern: stores and e-commerce share growth duties. Both channels require real merchandising and footprint discipline. This is the zone most $50M+ public DTC brands aspire to.

Tier 3 (store-led specialty, 40%+ own-retail). Lululemon at an estimated 40% to 50% (811 full-price stores, $1,426 per square foot, $11.1B revenue, with the math shown in the methodology section). Warby Parker at an estimated 60%+ (323 stores, $871.9M revenue, management commentary that "the majority of revenue" comes from stores). The operator pattern: the business is a retail store fleet that happens to have an e-commerce site. Capital allocation, hiring, and operating cadence look more like Gap or J.Crew than like a Shopify brand.

The macro context anchors why own-retail still matters even for digitally-native brands. US e-commerce share of total retail trade was 16.9% in Q1 2026 (FRED ECOMPCTSA, seasonally adjusted, republishing the Census Bureau Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales release). Even at peak holiday seasonality the line has never broken 20% on this series. Brick-and-mortar still owns more than 83% of US retail dollars. Most retail dollars are still spent in physical stores, which is exactly why every Tier 3 specialty brand in the table above is built around a store fleet. Vendor reports (eMarketer, Forrester) tend to land 5 to 10 percentage points higher because they include broader e-commerce definitions; we anchor on ECOMPCTSA because it is the official Census number and the cleanest apples-to-apples series.

Allbirds is the case study in getting it wrong

The Allbirds disclosure is the clearest cautionary tale in the public set.

The FY2025 10-K (filed 2026-03-31) confirms the company closed all remaining US full-price retail stores in Q1 2026. Total global fleet went from 23 stores a year earlier to 4 stores today: 2 US outlets and 2 UK stores. The retail workforce went from over 200 employees to under 50. FY2025 net revenue was 152.5 million dollars, down 19.7% YoY. Net loss was 77.3 million dollars on that revenue.

The 10-K is explicit about the cause: "declines in our retail and e-commerce businesses resulting from store closures" combined with an international shift from owned operations to distributors. Allbirds opened a Tier 2 / Tier 3 store fleet during 2020 to 2022 on a Tier 1 brand-awareness base. When the digital channel softened, the store P&L did not have the unaided demand to backstop it.

The pattern operators should take away: closing all your stores after opening them is far more expensive than never opening. Allbirds spent the capital twice: once on build-out, once on closure. The downstream costs (severance, lease-break, write-downs) hit the FY2025 P&L. Allbirds opened ahead of the LTV math could justify. If you are a 5 to 50 million dollar DTC brand asking the question now, the Allbirds case is the one to study, not the Lululemon case.

What this means for your channel-mix plan in 2026

Three things to do this quarter.

Diagnose your tier honestly before you set a target. If your brand has under 5% unaided awareness in your top-3 markets and your branded-search volume is flat YoY, you are a Tier 1 operator regardless of what your ad agency tells you. Stores will not fix demand. They will absorb cash. Spend the next two years on retention, content, and brand-search lift before signing a lease.

If you do open a store, open one and instrument the catchment. A single store in your highest-LTV city for 18 to 24 months gives you a clean read on whether stores lift total-channel revenue in the catchment or just substitute for online. Most failed retail expansions skipped this step. The data you need is post-open digital revenue in the trade area against pre-open digital revenue in the same trade area, controlled for total-business growth. If digital drops more than 10% in the catchment, your store is cannibalizing, not adding.

Build the capital plan to absorb 18 to 24 months of store loss before contribution turns positive. Sales-per-square-foot benchmarks (Lululemon at $1,426 in FY2025, down from $1,574 a year earlier) are top-quartile-brand numbers. A new store at a 5 to 50 million dollar DTC brand will run at 30% to 50% of that productivity in year one. Assume 1.0 to 2.5 million dollars in year-one revenue per store and a contribution loss of 200 to 500 thousand dollars while the store ramps. If your balance sheet cannot absorb that without diluting growth in your highest-ROI channel, the lease is the wrong decision regardless of how well your brand is performing on Shopify.

Levi Strauss is the only brand in our sample that discloses own-retail-store revenue share cleanly: 33%. Everyone else either lumps it into DTC (Birkenstock 38%, On Holding 41.8%) or does not disclose at all (Lululemon, Warby Parker, Crocs, FIGS, ELF, YETI). The three-tier ladder shows up once you triangulate: digitally-native at 0% to 10%, omnichannel at 25% to 40%, store-led at 40%+. Most $5 to $50 million DTC brands are Tier 1 operators behaving like Tier 2 operators. Allbirds is the case study in what that costs.

Sources and methodology

Primary data was pulled from SEC EDGAR 10-K and 20-F filings for the most recently completed fiscal year, accessed 2026-06-01. The 10 brands in our sample (Levi Strauss, Lululemon, Warby Parker, Birkenstock, On Holding, Crocs, FIGS, Allbirds, e.l.f. Beauty, YETI) cover apparel, footwear, eyewear, healthcare apparel, mass beauty, and drinkware. Fiscal year-ends vary: Levi's ends November, Lululemon ends late January / early February, Birkenstock ends September, ELF ends March, and the remaining brands report on calendar-year-end. The FY2025 label in our data table refers to each company's most recent annual filing, not a calendar-year apples-to-apples comparison.

Own-retail-store revenue share is the metric of interest. Levi Strauss is the only brand that discloses this directly as a percentage of net revenues in the Item 1 Business section of its 10-K (33% in FY2025, up from 32% in FY2024 and 30% in FY2023). For every other brand, we either flag the value as N/D (not disclosed) where the company does not provide channel detail (Birkenstock own-retail standalone, On Holding own-retail standalone), or provide a triangulated estimate where store count, square footage, sales-per-square-foot, and management commentary support a directional read.

For triangulated estimates: Lululemon's $1,426 sales per square foot across 811 stores, combined with an estimated average store size of 3,500 to 4,500 square feet (typical for full-price athletic-apparel flagships, which run larger than Levi's denim format), supports an own-retail revenue band of 36% to 47% against $11.1B FY2025 revenue (math: 811 × 3,500 × $1,426 = $4.05B / $11.1B = 36%; 811 × 4,500 × $1,426 = $5.20B / $11.1B = 47%). We round the band to 40% to 50%. This is also consistent with a peer-scale read against Levi's disclosed 33% own-retail share adjusted upward for Lululemon's full-price-only positioning (Levi's includes outlets), higher per-store productivity, and effectively zero wholesale channel. Warby Parker's $871.9M revenue against 323 stores, plus management commentary that the majority of revenue comes from physical locations, supports an own-retail estimate above 60%. Crocs' 100% minus 47.9% wholesale minus 37.8% digital (which includes brand-owned websites plus third-party e-tailer wholesale plus marketplaces) leaves a 12% to 18% own-retail residual. YETI's 27 owned stores against $1.7B+ revenue puts own-retail under 5% even at high per-store productivity.

For macro context: US e-commerce share of total retail trade is from the FRED series ECOMPCTSA, which republishes the US Census Bureau Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales release. Q1 2026 value is 16.9% of total retail (NAICS 44-45 plus 454, seasonally adjusted). We use ECOMPCTSA specifically because it measures total e-commerce sales (pure-play plus chain e-commerce) as a share of total retail. A related Census series, NAICS 4541 ("Electronic shopping and mail-order houses") divided by total retail trade, comes in higher at 19.3% (December 2025, $122.5B / $634.8B); that series measures a sector ratio rather than total e-commerce penetration. Vendor reports from eMarketer and Forrester typically land at 22% to 23%, including broader definitions of digital commerce. The Census quarterly e-commerce share (ECOMPCTSA) is the cleanest "ecommerce vs brick-and-mortar" benchmark available and is the series we recommend operators anchor against.

Triangulation sourcing also included a Pinecone retrieval over 5,400+ Eightx founder-call segments where own-retail-store decisions were discussed. The recurring partner-call pattern when founders ask about opening stores: stores require independent brand awareness for sell-through; without awareness the store will not pick the brand out of the shelf or the shop window. That voice is reflected in the operator section above. We also reviewed Perplexity-sourced commentary on Warby Parker, FIGS, Allbirds, On Holding, Birkenstock, ELF, and YETI to cross-check our 10-K reads against analyst and press summaries.

Limitations: most public brands do not disaggregate own-retail vs e-commerce inside their DTC line. For those companies (Birkenstock, On Holding, Lululemon, Warby Parker) we provide an estimated band rather than a point estimate. The estimates use the methodology shown above and should be read as directional, not as precise as the Levi's disclosed 33%. The sample is also weighted toward US-listed brands; the broader global picture (Adidas, Nike, Inditex, H&M, MUJI) would shift the tier-2 omnichannel band slightly higher. This tracker is refreshed quarterly when new 10-Ks land: February (calendar-year filers), March (Lululemon plus ELF), May (ELF FY-end), September (Birkenstock FY-end).

For related benchmarks, see our average ecommerce gross margin Shopify vs Amazon and average ecommerce MER by vertical. For the operator framing on when to open a store, see fractional CFO services for ecommerce.

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