Dealer Average Operating Profit Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels
Solomon Coyle is pleased to announce the availability of results for the YE2023 Financial Benchmarking Survey. Conducted annually, the financial benchmarking survey represents the participation of hundreds of Allsteel, Haworth, Kimball International, MillerKnoll, Steelcase, and Teknion dealers.
Participating dealers receive access to benchmarking data that goes far beyond traditional dealer financials. In addition to a granular analysis of the dealer’s own performance, they can compare themselves to similar dealers on hundreds of actionable metrics.
Report Highlights
This year’s data indicates that sales volume and operating profit for the average dealer is back to pre-pandemic levels with the average operating profit at 2.5%, up over last year, which is consistent with the historical norms of 2% – 2.5% observed over the last 30+ years.
Average Dealer Operating Profit Over Past 5 Years
David Solomon, principal at Solomon Coyle, states, “Even though the sales volume of the average dealer is back to pre-pandemic levels, when you take into consideration inflation, dealers are selling fewer units than they were pre-pandemic. Yet, dealer profitability is increasing.” David continues, “We see dealers are doing a better job of using data to increase their profitability. We also see the dealer model is shifting from that of a vendor to that of a professional services firm or specialty contractor. They are doing a better job of selling Design and Project Management services and being more discretionary about the business they are going after.”
John Joseph, head of business analytics agrees, sharing, “David’s sentiment is supported by the data, which shows that services accounted for almost 20% of total dealer revenue in 2023 compared to just 18.2% back in 2019. For the average dealer, this translates to over $900K in additional services revenue.”
Services as a Percent of Total Revenue
Report Webinars Scheduled
Dealers who participated in this year’s survey should watch their inbox for an invitation to attend one of Solomon Coyle’s upcoming webinars to review key findings. These manufacturer-aligned webinars will take place the last week of May and the first week of June.
If you have not yet participated in the survey, you can reach out to support@solomoncoyle.com to learn how to submit your data and be eligible to receive the in-depth results.