Gross Profit Margins by Ecommerce Product Category

e.l.f. Beauty 70.7%, Olaplex 69.4%

Beauty is one of the highest and most consistent gross-margin categories in this dataset. e.l.f. Beauty reported 70.7% gross margin in its most recent fiscal year, and Olaplex reported 69.4% in the same period, a remarkably tight cluster for two companies at very different price points (e.l.f. sells mass-market, Olaplex sells premium salon-grade haircare). The consistency suggests something structural rather than brand-specific: skincare and cosmetics formulations are genuinely cheap to manufacture relative to their retail price, and the category supports premium positioning regardless of where a brand sits on the price ladder. That's consistent with what we found researching elasticity by category: skincare buyers respond more to how a price signals quality than to the price itself. Both dynamics point the same direction, margin in this category comes from brand equity and formulation storytelling, not from a bare-bones cost structure.

USANA 78.3%, Nature's Sunshine 72.4%

Supplements post the highest gross margins of any category in this dataset. USANA reported 78.3% and Nature's Sunshine 72.4% in their most recent fiscal years, both direct-selling companies that manufacture and market their own formulations rather than reselling other brands. Low bulk ingredient costs relative to finished retail price explain most of this: a capsule or powder blend is inexpensive to produce at scale, and the category commands a retail price built around perceived efficacy and brand trust rather than raw material cost. Worth flagging for context: both companies here use a direct-selling or multi-level distribution model, which carries its own cost structure (commissions, distributor incentives) further down the income statement that a standard DTC ecommerce brand wouldn't have, so the gross margin figure is comparable, but the path from gross margin to net profit is not identical to a typical Shopify-based supplement brand.

Pandora 79.3-80.4%, Signet Jewelers 42.0%

Jewelry shows the sharpest split between manufacturer and retailer margins in this entire dataset. Pandora, which designs and manufactures its own charms and jewelry, posted gross margins of 79.3% to 80.4% across recent quarters. Signet Jewelers, the largest US jewelry retailer (Kay, Zales, Jared), which sells a mix of owned and third-party branded merchandise including Pandora products themselves, posted 42.0% for its most recent quarter. That's essentially a 2x gap for jewelry sold under the same roof. The explanation is the same one that shows up across nearly every category on this page: Pandora captures the manufacturing margin because it makes the product, while Signet, as a multi-brand retailer, buys inventory at wholesale and marks it up once. If you manufacture or privately label what you sell, you're closer to the Pandora end of this range. If you resell other brands, expect something closer to Signet's.

The retailer here (Signet) sells the manufacturer's product (Pandora) in its own stores, making this one of the cleanest same-industry manufacturer-vs-retailer comparisons available.

Hasbro 72.4%, Mattel 48.7%

Toys is the category where this dataset's numbers most defy the simple manufacturer-vs-retailer story. Both Hasbro and Mattel design and manufacture their own toy lines, yet Hasbro posted 72.4% gross margin in its most recent fiscal year against Mattel's 48.7%, down from 50.8% the year prior. The gap isn't really about toys. Hasbro's consolidated figures blend in a growing, higher-margin digital gaming and licensing business (Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and related entertainment IP), categories that carry closer to software-level margins than physical toy manufacturing does. Mattel's business mix stays closer to pure physical toy production, and its 2025 margin compression was driven by cost inflation, tariffs, and currency effects specific to that manufacturing base. The lesson for a toy or game seller: a consolidated company-wide margin can hide a very different margin profile between physical product lines and any licensing or digital revenue mixed into the same report.

Freshpet 40.8%, Chewy 29.8%

Pet products sit in a more moderate range than beauty or supplements. Freshpet, which manufactures its own fresh pet food and controls its supply chain end to end, posted 40.8% gross margin for its most recent full year. Chewy, an online retailer that resells thousands of other companies' pet brands, posted 29.8%. The gap here (about 11 points) is narrower than the jewelry or beauty comparisons above, likely because pet food and supplies carry real, non-trivial input costs (meat, cold-chain logistics, packaging) even for the manufacturer, unlike a cosmetic formulation or a supplement capsule where raw material cost is a much smaller share of retail price. Pet is a useful category to benchmark against if your own product has meaningful physical input costs rather than being primarily a formulation or design margin play.

Williams-Sonoma 46.9%, RH 44.1%, Wayfair 30.2%

Furniture and home goods shows a clear premium-versus-mass-market split rather than a clean manufacturer-versus-retailer one. Williams-Sonoma (which owns Pottery Barn and West Elm alongside its namesake brand) posted 46.9% gross margin for its most recent fiscal year, and RH (Restoration Hardware), positioned even further upmarket, posted 44.1%. Wayfair, a mass-market online furniture marketplace aggregating thousands of third-party suppliers, posted 30.2%. All three companies are retailers in the sense that they don't manufacture most of what they sell, so the roughly 15-point gap here comes from brand positioning and curation rather than the make-versus-resell distinction that drives the gap in categories like jewelry. A tightly curated, premium-positioned home goods brand can command meaningfully higher margin than an open marketplace competing on selection and price.

Scholastic 56%, Barnes & Noble Education 21.4%

Books show one of the widest gaps in this dataset, and it comes from a specific structural difference rather than premium positioning. Scholastic, which owns the publishing rights to its trade and educational titles (including major franchises), posted 56% gross margin in its most recent fiscal year. Barnes & Noble Education, which operates campus bookstores and resells textbooks it doesn't publish, posted 21.4%, and textbook retailing carries thinner margins still because a meaningful share of campus bookstore revenue is required course materials with limited pricing power. A publisher who owns the underlying content captures a fundamentally different margin than any retailer selling that same content, physical or digital, on to a reader.

Nike 42.7-42.9%, Lululemon 54.2-58.3%

Nike, the largest athletic apparel and footwear company in the world, posted 42.7% gross margin in fiscal 2025 and 42.9% for fiscal 2026, with meaningful quarter-to-quarter swings driven by tariffs, discounting, and channel mix (one 2026 quarter dipped as low as 40.2% before a tariff-recovery benefit pushed it back to 49.2% the following quarter). Lululemon, positioned at a higher price point with a narrower, less-discounted assortment, ran 54.2% to 58.3% across recent quarters, a full 12 to 16 points above Nike depending on the period compared. The gap tracks discounting intensity as much as raw product cost: Nike's margin moves noticeably with promotional activity and tariff exposure in a way Lululemon's premium, lower-discount model doesn't experience to the same degree. Apparel margin is unusually sensitive to macro and trade-policy shocks compared to the other categories on this page, worth remembering if you're benchmarking against a single quarter's figure rather than a trailing range.

Nike's own quarterly margin swung by roughly 9 percentage points within fiscal 2026 alone, a useful reminder that a single-quarter figure in apparel can be noisy.

GoPro 31.8-36.0%, Best Buy 22.6%

Consumer electronics runs lower than most other categories on this page, reflecting real hardware costs and heavy price competition. GoPro, which designs and manufactures its own action cameras, posted gross margins between 31.8% and 36.0% across recent quarters. Best Buy, a general electronics retailer reselling thousands of other brands, posted 22.6%. The roughly 10-point gap follows the same manufacturer-versus-retailer pattern seen in pet products and jewelry, but the absolute numbers in this category sit well below beauty, supplements, or jewelry. Consumer electronics hardware carries genuinely high component and manufacturing costs relative to retail price, and the category competes hard on price against well-known specs, leaving less room for the brand-story-driven margin that lifts categories like skincare or supplements.

General Mills 34.6%, Conagra 25.9%

Packaged food and grocery posts the lowest margins of any category in this dataset. General Mills reported 34.6% gross margin for its most recent fiscal year, and Conagra Brands reported 25.9%, down from 27.7% the year before. Both companies manufacture their own branded food products, so this isn't a manufacturer-versus-retailer gap, it's the category itself. Commodity input costs (grain, protein, packaging) represent a larger, more volatile share of retail price than in any other category here, and shelf-stable packaged food competes in a market where private-label alternatives keep pricing power limited. If your ecommerce catalog includes food or grocery items, this is the category on this page to benchmark against, and it's worth expecting real margin volatility tied to commodity input costs, not just demand shifts.