Circana counts $330 billion in store-brand sales last year, half the growth from club stores.
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MarketScale Issue 6  ·  September 15–21, 2026
B2B Weekly
Ten stories from seventeen industries, picked for people who run things.
 
Club stores drove nearly half of the growth in $330B U.S. store-brand sales
The house brand hit $330 billion
Circana counts $330 billion in U.S. store-brand sales, and the house label now holds 24% of every unit sold in CPG. Club stores did nearly half the growing. The warehouse with the concrete floor and the pallet of muffins is now the most important brand builder in American retail.
If you sell anything through a channel, this is your benchmark for the week. Your biggest customer has looked at your margin, decided it can make the product itself, and put it on the shelf next to yours at eye level. Circana expects the share gains to keep coming through 2026, just slower, because national brands finally noticed that pricing is a dial they can turn.
Also this week: hotels raised pay and still cannot hire, and marketers cannot prove themselves to the CFO. Read on.
Also inside
 
 70% of hotels raised pay. More than half are still short-staffed.
 
 Only 22% of marketers can prove their worth to the CFO.
 
 Holiday online sales will grow twice as fast as stores.
 
Retail01 / 10

Club stores drove nearly half of the growth in $330B U.S. store-brand sales

Your biggest customer is also your best-funded competitor, and it decides where your product sits.

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Only 6% of companies get value from AI, Forbes reports  
 
Software & Technology02 / 10

Only 6% of companies get value from AI, Forbes reports

The 6% are not smarter, they picked one workflow and finished it, which is the part everyone skips.

Read the story ›

75% of CISOs secure AI workflows with controls built for other risks
 
Software & Technology03

75% of CISOs secure AI workflows with controls built for other risks

The browser tab is the new loading dock, and most security teams are still watching the front gate.

   Deloitte: Holiday e-commerce to reach up to $319B in 2026, 27
 
Retail04

Deloitte: Holiday e-commerce to reach up to $319B in 2026, 27

Online grows at twice the pace of the store, so your fulfillment staffing plan is now the holiday plan.
Also this week 6 more, one line each
05   Energy · Power and utility deals hit a record $205 billion in the first half of 2026 Buying a gas plant is faster than building one, and that speed premium lands on somebody's power bill.
06   Hospitality · More than half of hotels are still short-staffed despite 70% raising pay Raises alone did not fill the schedule, and supplies now hurt more than payroll, which surprised the people writing the checks.
07   Transportation · Tesla's Cybercab Is on Austin Streets. The Bigger Test Is Whether It Becomes a Fleet Platform. A car that drives itself is the easy part. The depot, the charging and the cleaning are the business.
08   Hospitality · STR: Summer 2025 was the weakest in four years Business travel flatlined while leisure carried the summer, which is a fragile way to run a hotel.
09   Transportation · International and PlusAI are building Level 4 trucks on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion with Thor Factory-installed autonomy moves the question from whether it works to who signs off on hundreds of billions of miles.
10   Marketing Tech · Only 22% of senior marketers feel sure they can justify value to the CFO Finance and marketing use the same word, growth, to mean two different spreadsheets, and finance owns the budget.

That is the week. The store brands had a good one. Here is hoping yours is better.

Everything above ran on the MarketScale Network, the industry newsrooms we operate across seventeen industries. If someone forwarded this to you and you want the next one, start free and it comes with the account. Know a colleague who would argue with it? Forward it.

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