Ecommerce Trends: Which type of online retailer is growing fastest in the 2020s?

With the 2020s more than half over, a new wave of online retailers has pushed ahead to dominate growth in ecommerce sales. The 2026 edition of Digital Commerce 360’s annual Top 1000 Report sheds some light on which types of merchants are growing at the fastest rates.

The merchants covered in the report reflect data collected from the Top 2000 Database, where those online retailers are ranked by annual web sales. Together, their total ecommerce sales reached $1. 379 trillion in 2025. That was the fifth consecutive year in which sales passed $1 trillion.

However, growth has looked very different across merchant types during the 2020s as retailers navigated an end to double-digit annual growth in 2022. In that year, as the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic played out, ecommerce sales were up by just 5. 0% from a year earlier. Still, a year later, growth began to accelerate again, with web sales up by 6.

8% in 2023 and then by 7. 1% in 2024. Among the top retailers in North America at the end of 2025, two merchant types’ five-year compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) finished 2025 above 9%. What are the fastest-growing online retailers in 2026?

Among the merchant types tracked in the Top 1000, Consumer Brand Manufacturers (CBMs) proved to be growing at the healthiest clip. In fact, CBMs’ 5-year CAGR finished 2025 at 9. 3%. This category includes some of the database’s top performers, such as Apple (No. 3), Dell (No. 16) and Lululemon Athletica (No. 23).

In addition, it is home to the online health platform Hims & Hers (No. 39), which was 2025’s top online retailer in Health & Beauty, as well as fastest-growing online retailer overall in the Top 1000 Database, increasing its web sales by 60. 7% year over year.

Digital Commerce 360 defines CBMs as “merchants that produce their own products and sell direct to consumers online.” As their name implies, their brands tend to carry weight with consumers in both their products and online stores through which they sell.

In addition, CBMs are among the online retailers most likely to offer subscriptions to their products, with 4. 4% of them using subscription models in their business. Growth among Web-Only Retailers Right behind CBMs, which only sell products online and lack physical stores, Web-Only Retailers also excelled during the first half of the 2020s.

At the end of 2025, their five-year CAGR stood at 9. 2%, helped by such ecommerce juggernauts as Chewy (No. 10), Wayfair (No. 11) and iHerb (No. 28).

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Web-Only Retailers are heavily boosted in Top 1000 results from the presence of Amazon, which Digital Commerce 360 still places in the category, despite its use of physical Whole Foods stores and other properties.

Additionally, Wayfair has opened physical store locations after operating entirely as an online-only merchant for years. Amazon alone has achieved a five-year CAGR of 10. 1%. Without its presence, Web-Only Retailers in the Top 1000 collectively would have a CAGR of 5. 7% over the same period of time.

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