CaratMiniso grows 53% and takes the top of NRF's Hot 25
Kantar ranks the fastest-growing US retailers on domestic sales growth from 2024 to 2025. Dick's Sporting Goods is second at 49% after buying Foot Locker, and every name in the top five is a value format.
§1A list with no jewellers on it.
The National Retail Federation's Hot 25 list for 2026, compiled by Kantar and published 21 August, ranks Miniso first on 53% growth in US sales. Dick's Sporting Goods is second at 49%, lifted by its acquisition of Foot Locker. Daiso Sangyo is third at 26%, Primark fourth at 24% and Five Below fifth at 23%. The metric is the increase in domestic sales between 2024 and 2025, which makes this a ranking of momentum rather than of size. Rachel Dalton, Kantar's head of retail insights for the Americas, said "value is a huge story in this year's list."
None of these are jewellers and that is the reason to read it. Miniso sells blind-box toys, plush, stationery and skincare at entry prices, built on licensed collaborations and fast inventory turnover. Daiso and Five Below are discount formats. Primark is fast fashion that does not sell online at scale. What the top of the list has in common is a low ticket, a high visit frequency and a store designed to be walked rather than searched, and Kantar's own reading is that value-seeking now reaches into higher-income households too.
§2What the top five have in common.
The read-through for a jewellery counter is about the customer's calibration rather than about competition. Nobody chooses between a Miniso haul and a diamond stud. But the retailers growing fastest are the ones teaching a shopper what a good value looks like and what a discovery-led store feels like, and that shopper walks into a fine jewellery showroom with those two expectations already set. This paper reported on 21 August that Zales, a Signet banner, puts 67% of purchases among its core shoppers as self-purchases, which is the same customer at a different price point: buying frequently, for herself, without an occasion.
None of these are jewellers and that is the reason to read it
§3The limits of the ranking.
The honest limits of the list should be stated. It measures growth off a base, so a chain expanding from a small US footprint outranks a larger one growing steadily, and Dick's second place is an acquisition rather than organic demand. It is a US ranking. And it covers 2024 to 2025, so it describes the year before the current gold price, not this one. It is a directional read on where traffic concentrated, not a forecast.
An independent jeweller has nothing to learn from Miniso's assortment and something to learn from its cadence. The formats winning American footfall right now give a customer a reason to come in without a purchase in mind and a price at which trying something costs nothing, and most fine jewellery stores are built to do the opposite. That is defensible when the customer arrives already committed, which is what the gift calendar used to guarantee. It is a problem when two thirds of the counter is self-purchase, because a self-purchase is a visit that has to be earned before it can be sold to.
The lesson is the entry price and the permission to browse, not the merchandise.
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