Datadory notebook
Is there a dedicated home improvement retail dataset?
No dedicated home improvement retail dataset exists in Datadory's catalog: the industry carries 0 primary tags and pools 13 secondary records from adjacent sectors. Twelve of those 13 are free, and the closest purpose-built items are Lowe's Building Materials Product Catalog and the Census MRTS series covering building material dealers.
1,744 datasets. Pick your catch.
Why doesn't a dedicated home improvement retail dataset exist?
The gap is a tagging fact, not a sourcing accident. Datadory catalogs 1,744 datasets across 163 industries, of which 159 clear the minimum viability bar of 3+ records - and Home Improvement Retail enters that viable set entirely through pooling: 0 primary tags and 13 secondary records borrowed from adjacent sectors. Every one of the 13 belongs primarily to another industry, from Building Products (Lowe's catalog) and Apparel Retail (UK ONS retail sales, Hugging Face corpora) to Food Distributors (Economic Census NAICS 424) and, in the oddest spillover, education - OECD Education at a Glance rides along through the OECD Data Explorer.
No statistical agency publishes a "home improvement retail" series, because official statistics slice by NAICS code rather than shopping mission. The DIY aisle lives inside NAICS 444, building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers - a line item within broader Census retail programs, never a standalone product. The home-improvement-retail data hub lists all 13 pooled records with their primary industries attached.
Is the pooled home improvement data actually good enough to build on?
Pooled does not mean thin. Across the 13 records the average Datadory quality score is 9.0 against a catalog-wide mean of 7.81; three records hit 10 - the Eurostat PRODCOM/COMEXT browser, the MRTS/MARTS electronics-and-appliance cut whose monthly sales run from January 1992 to present, and the Economic Census Wholesale Trade (NAICS 424) release - six more score 9, and none falls below 8. Catalog-wide, only 62.8 percent of the 1,744 records reach 8 or higher.
How do you track DIY demand month by month?
Monthly DIY demand is the most requested cut, and the pool delivers it end to end:
Where does company-level home improvement data come from?
Lowe's is the mirror case: this pool holds no Lowe's filings record, so its Developer Hub catalog feed is the only structured Lowe's source here. Store counts and sales-by-department tables sit inside Home Depot's 10-K rather than on the IR landing page, so expect some PDF work.
Can you still size the market and the renovation wallet?
Market sizing and renovation-financing questions resolve through three more pooled records. County Business Patterns delivers annual establishment counts, mid-March employment, first-quarter and annual payroll by county, metro, ZIP and state, split into nine employment-size classes - the geography-by-size grid analysts use to map big-box footprints before leases are signed. This pool indexes it through an automotive-dealers cut (U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments), but the program covers all retail NAICS codes, so building material dealers share the same grid.
Five-year structure comes from the U.S. Economic Census - Wholesale Trade (NAICS 424): merchant-wholesale counts for the tier that replenishes big-box shelves, published for years ending in 2 and 7, with the 2017 and 2022 vintages comparable and the next census year 2027.
Pick up where this leaves off
Every one of these ships with sample rows before you commit to anything.
Lowe's Building Materials Product Catalog
Census API Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS) Data
period · time · category_code …+8 more
Census API – Advance Monthly Retail Trade (MARTS)
cell_value · category_code · data_type_code …+6 more
UK ONS Retail Sales Index - Retail Industry
Home Depot Investor Relations – SEC Filings & Financials
U.S. Census County Business Patterns - Automobile Dealers Establishments
FIPSTATE · FIPSCTY · NAICS …+7 more
Want rows instead of a pitch? Name the datasets.
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Get a sampleQuestions worth asking
Where can I get monthly building material dealers sales data?
The Census Bureau publishes it inside the Monthly Retail Trade Survey: monthly sales, inventories and inventory-to-sales ratios by kind of business, including building material dealers. Both the MRTS and advance MARTS JSON APIs are commercial delivery terms 1.0, free with a Census integration key, and split estimates by seasonal adjustment.
Which home improvement datasets have official APIs?
Six sources in the pool serve official APIs: the U.S. Census Bureau Data API (free key over CBP and Economic Census series), Data.gov's documented Catalog API with api.data.gov keys at 1,000 requests per hour, Eurostat, the OECD Data Explorer, Hugging Face's Hub API, and Lowe's partner Product Detail APIs.
How do I size the US home improvement retail market?
Use Census structure data: County Business Patterns gives establishment counts by county and employment-size class, and the Economic Census adds revenue at six-digit NAICS level every five years, comparable across the 2017 and 2022 vintages. Pair both with MRTS monthly category sales for current-year trend.