U.S. e-commerce growth keeps Big Lots stores tied to online orders

A Big Lots store is no longer just a place to shop. It is part of the fulfillment system now, and the latest Census numbers show why that matters: U.S. e-commerce sales hit $326.7 billion in the first quarter of 2026, equal to 16.9% of total retail sales.

That share is not a side note. The Census Bureau said online sales rose 2.7% from the prior quarter and about 9.8% from a year earlier, while total retail sales reached $1.929 trillion, up 1.5% from the fourth quarter of 2025 and 3.9% from the first quarter of 2025. In other words, online growth is still advancing inside a retail market that is growing overall, not simply replacing stores. The bureau’s quarterly e-commerce series also goes back to 1999, a reminder that what once looked like a niche channel is now baked into the structure of U.S. retail.

For Big Lots workers, the operational effect is immediate. A digital order does not stay digital for long. It can become a pickup handoff, a curbside transaction, a return, a substitution, or a customer complaint about whether an item was actually in stock. That means the work on the sales floor increasingly depends on inventory accuracy, fast communication between departments, and associates who can move between stocking, service, and order fulfillment without missing a beat.

Big Lots has been living inside that shift for years. In 2020, the company said it had rolled out Buy Online Pickup In-Store in all 1,400 stores, launched curbside pickup at all stores, and added nationwide same-day delivery through biglots.com. It also said ship-from-store capabilities would be implemented in selected stores. Those moves made each location more important as a logistics node, not just a browsing destination.

The company’s current situation makes that even more consequential. Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 9, 2024, and its fiscal 2024 annual report said it operated 1,392 stores and an e-commerce platform as of February 3, 2024. In 2025, the retailer also warned shoppers about fake websites and said it had no e-commerce component after its store footprint changed under new ownership, underscoring how unsettled the brand’s digital presence has been.

For workers, the message from the Census report is straightforward: even at a value chain built on stores, online demand now shapes the daily rhythm of the job. The pace of a shift is increasingly set by whether the store can find the item, move it, hand it off, and account for it correctly.