How the Top 100 report is compiled
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, June 12, 2008
High Point — Furniture/Today's exclusive top 100 listing ranks furniture stores by sales of furniture, bedding and decorative accessories, including fabric and furniture protection and warranties.
To qualify, a retailer must specialize in home furnishings. The mix may include electronics, appliances, home textiles, tabletop and other home furnishings, but furniture, bedding and decorative accessories must account for 25% or more of total sales. Also, at least 25% of a retailer's furniture, bedding and decorative accessory sales must come from its stores.
Retailers with a broad merchandise mix, such as department stores, mass merchants, warehouse clubs and closeout retailers, that operate separate home furnishings stores are eligible for listing with the sales from the free-standing home stores only. For example, Costco is on the Top 100 list for the first time based on the sales from its two Costco Home stores. The ranking figure does not include the furniture sales from the company's main warehouse clubs.
Groups of stores with common ownership that operate under separate names qualify for the list. Examples are Berkshire Hathaway and Hendricks Furniture Group.
Single-source networks such as Ethan Allen and La-Z-Boy, and franchised operations such as Norwalk-The Furniture Idea, are also included. Sales for manufacturers' dedicated store networks are based on the dedicated stores only and exclude sales from in-store galleries.
In cases of stores with identical sales, the company with the faster sales growth earns the higher rank.
All furniture, bedding and decorative accessory sales figures are Furniture/Today estimates, unless these figures are reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Furniture/Today surveys retailers to develop information for the estimates. When companies do not provide information, estimates are based on information from a variety of sources, such as public company filings with the SEC, discussions with industry analysts and suppliers, and published and unpublished reports, including newspaper articles in various retail trading areas.
For totals and market share calculations, any overlapping or double-counting of sales volume and store counts is eliminated. For example, when a Top 100 retailer operates single-source stores, such as City Furniture, which also operates Ashley Furniture HomeStores, sales from the single-source stores are counted only once.
Year-to-year comparisons are made to the same group of Top 100 companies ranked in both years.
For comparison of total 2005 and 2004 sales for the Top 100, sales for Costco Home and Linder's Furniture were assumed flat.
