What: Latin America's five largest department store groups grew combined revenue 10% and profit 48% in 2025, even as the format shrinks across much of the developed world.

Why it is important: It shows department stores can thrive by becoming indispensable rather than exceptional — embedding into banking, credit, real estate and logistics rather than chasing luxury or experience-led reinvention.

For much of the developed world, department stores are shrinking. Latin America is the exception: in 2025, the five largest groups — Cencosud, Falabella, Liverpool, Ripley and El Palacio de Hierro — grew combined revenue 10% to $51.3 billion and profit nearly 48% to $3.18 billion, even as 2026 growth cools.

The model driving this is integration. Chile alone produced three of the five giants. Falabella spans department stores, Sodimac, Tottus, Mallplaza and its own bank, letting customers finance a purchase, shop groceries and visit a mall within one ecosystem; its profit roughly tripled in 2025. Cencosud lifted profit over 70% on flat sales through similar diversification, while Ripley's profits doubled after losses as recently as 2023.

Mexico took a narrower path: Liverpool's profits fell despite rising revenue, while the luxury-focused El Palacio de Hierro grew sales over 8%. Brazil skipped the department-store model entirely, building fashion chains like Lojas Renner and Riachuelo and mall operators like Iguatemi instead.

The common thread is consolidation of the entire customer relationship — merchandise, financing, credit and property — under one roof, rather than reinvention through luxury or spectacle.

IADS Notes: The 48% profit surge and 10% revenue growth that Latin America's top five department-store groups posted in 2025 were tracked in detail as the year unfolded (Modaes, March 2026), with Falabella and Ripley driving the gains. That momentum has since cooled: combined revenue growth for the same five groups slowed to 2.2% in the first quarter of 2026 (Modaes, May 2026) and to 2.3% for the first half, even as combined net income edged past the prior year's level (Modaes, September 2026). The deceleration has not been uniform: Cencosud swung to a quarterly loss as transformation costs, weaker margins and competitive pressure weighed on results (Bloomberg, August 2026), while Ripley's growth increasingly leaned on its Peruvian retail business rather than its home Chilean market, with profit up 59.8% in the second quarter on a 13.5% rise in Peru (Modaes, August 2026).

Why department stores are indispensable in Latin America