Repeat Purchase Rate by Industry Benchmarks
Repeat purchase rate varies wildly by category — 50%+ in consumables, under 25% in durables. Use these benchmarks to set a realistic retention target for your store.
Repeat Purchase Rate by Industry
The share of customers who place a second order, benchmarked across DTC verticals — typically 40-60% in consumables and 15-30% in durables.
Repeat purchase rate (RPR) is the percentage of customers in a given period who go on to buy from you again. The 'right' number depends almost entirely on what you sell: a protein powder gets consumed and reordered every 30-45 days, a sofa does not. Benchmarking yourself against a generic e-commerce average is misleading because category replenishment cycles vary by a factor of ten or more.
This page groups DTC verticals into consumables (supplements, beauty, food, pet) and durables (apparel, home, electronics, furniture), and gives a target band for each. Use it to calibrate retention goals, model LTV, and decide where to invest acquisition spend.
The single biggest driver of repeat purchase rate is replenishment cycle. A customer who finishes a jar of moisturiser in six weeks has a built-in reason to come back; a customer who bought a dining table does not. Before benchmarking, classify your catalogue honestly — consumables behave fundamentally differently from durables.
The second driver is measurement window. A 90-day RPR will look much lower than a 365-day RPR for the same store, especially in apparel or home where the natural reorder cycle is closer to a season than a month. Every benchmark below assumes a 12-month window measured from first order date, which is the most common reporting standard.
Repeat purchase rate by DTC vertical (12-month window, measured from first order)
| Vertical | Bottom quartile | Median | Top quartile | Typical reorder cycle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supplements & vitamins | 35% | 52% | 65% | 30-45 days |
| Beauty & skincare | 30% | 45% | 60% | 45-90 days |
| Food & beverage (DTC) | 32% | 48% | 62% | 21-30 days |
| Pet food & supplies | 40% | 55% | 70% | 30-45 days |
| Coffee & tea | 38% | 50% | 63% | 21-35 days |
| Apparel & accessories | 12% | 22% | 32% | 90-180 days |
| Home goods & decor | 10% | 18% | 28% | 120-240 days |
| Footwear | 15% | 24% | 34% | 120-180 days |
| Consumer electronics | 8% | 15% | 23% | 180-365 days |
| Jewellery | 14% | 23% | 33% | 90-180 days |
The pattern is consistent: any category with a natural replenishment cycle under 60 days clears 45% median RPR; anything with a cycle over 90 days struggles to break 25%. If your apparel store is sitting at 20%, you're near the median — not failing. If your supplements store is at 30%, you're in the bottom quartile and the problem is almost always lapsed reactivation, not acquisition.
Median repeat purchase rate by vertical (12 months)
Why the consumables vs durables gap is so wide
Consumables sell themselves the second time. A skincare customer who likes the product runs out, opens an email or sees a retargeting ad, and reorders — sometimes on subscription. The marketing job is reactivation timing, not persuasion. That's why median RPR in supplements, beauty, and pet sits between 45% and 55%.
Durables need a new reason. An apparel customer who loves your jeans doesn't need another pair for nine months — and by then a competitor's ad might be louder. That gap is structural: even excellent apparel brands cap out around 30-35% RPR over twelve months, and the way they grow LTV is by cross-selling adjacent categories (tops, outerwear, accessories) rather than chasing reorders of the same SKU.
Don't compare your 90-day RPR to a 365-day benchmark
The most common mistake we see is mixing measurement windows. A beauty store reporting '28% repeat rate' that turns out to be a 60-day window is actually tracking ahead of the 45% twelve-month median, not behind it. Lock your window before you compare, and report the same window consistently month over month.
How to set a realistic target for your store
Start with your vertical's median from the table above as your floor, then adjust for two things: AOV and product breadth. A high-AOV beauty brand (premium serums, €80+ AOV) will sit below the beauty median because each purchase lasts longer. A wide-catalogue apparel brand with strong cross-sell will sit above the apparel median because customers come back for adjacent items, not reorders. See the broader retention benchmarks page for how RPR interacts with cohort retention curves and LTV modelling.
A useful goal-setting rule: if you're below median, target a four-percentage-point lift in twelve months — that's achievable through post-purchase email, subscription nudges, and a tightened reactivation window. If you're already at or above the top quartile, the lever shifts from RPR to purchase frequency and AOV. For the difference between repeat purchase rate and the broader 'retention rate' metric, see retention vs repeat purchase rate.
Repeat purchase rate benchmarks — FAQ
There isn't a single number — it depends on what you sell. Consumables (supplements, beauty, pet, food) should aim for 45-55% over twelve months; durables (apparel, home, electronics) realistically sit at 18-25%. Compare to your own vertical's median, not a generic e-commerce average.
Take the number of customers who placed two or more orders in a defined window, divide by the total number of customers who placed at least one order in that window, and multiply by 100. The standard window is twelve months from first order date.
Repeat purchase rate counts customers who came back at least once. Retention rate typically measures cohort survival over time — what percentage of January's buyers are still active in month six, nine, twelve. RPR is a single number; retention is a curve.
Replenishment cycle. Supplements get consumed in 30-45 days, creating a natural reorder trigger. Apparel reorder cycles run 90-180 days and depend on new desire, not depletion. A 22% twelve-month RPR is the apparel median — not underperformance.
Yes, but report them separately too. Subscriptions inflate RPR mechanically, so a beauty brand at 60% RPR with half its base on subscription is a different business from one at 60% with no subscription. Track 'RPR excluding subscription' alongside the headline number.
Twelve months from first order date is the standard. Shorter windows (60, 90 days) are useful for consumables where the reorder cycle is fast, but they understate performance for durables. Pick one window and report it consistently month over month.
A four-to-six percentage point lift over twelve months is realistic if you start below median. Levers in order of impact: post-purchase email flow tuned to your reorder cycle, a subscribe-and-save offer for consumables, and a reactivation campaign at 1.5x the typical reorder cycle. Bigger jumps usually require product-line expansion.
Significantly. Customers acquired via paid social typically repeat at half the rate of those acquired via organic search or referral, because intent at first purchase is lower. Segment your RPR by first-touch channel before drawing conclusions about overall retention health.
Inversely, within a category. A €120 AOV beauty customer reorders less often than a €40 AOV beauty customer because the product lasts longer. When comparing to benchmarks, adjust expectations down by 5-10 percentage points if your AOV is materially above your vertical's norm.
RPR is the single biggest input to LTV after AOV. A 10-point increase in RPR roughly doubles average customer lifetime value in most consumable categories, because the customers who reorder once are far more likely to reorder a third, fourth, and fifth time. Improving RPR usually beats improving acquisition cost.
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