Share this on

Attention, all number lovers! Here's a bunch

Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, March 18, 2007

In our work we use a lot of numbers, and this column is chock full of them. (By the way, they're from the American Home Furnishings Alliance, the International Sleep Products Assn. and our own government.)

In 2006, total U.S. consumption of furniture and bedding was $83.9 billion, a 6.2% gain over 2005's $79 billion. Of that 2006 amount, just under $70 billion was sold through furniture stores. In 2004, furniture stores sold 75% of all furniture and bedding. It slipped to 74.5% in 2005 and 73.8% in 2006, as other retailers continued to gain a bigger share of our business.

Domestic wood furniture shipments grew 2.6% last year, while wood imports grew a below-trend 3.6%. China grew a sub-par 8.3% after growing 27.7% per year for the last decade. Vietnam surged 27.3% last year and Malaysia grew 12.5%, while Canada and Indonesia were flat, Italy and Mexico had modest single-digit declines, and Thailand and Brazil both plummeted more than 20%.

In upholstery, domestic shipments grew 4.8% last year, while imports grew a more vigorous 13.1%. Fully assembled upholstered furniture from China grew 37.9%, while upholstery from Italy and Canada fell 31.8% and 16.6%, respectively. Mexico was flat.

But full-year figures don't show the shifts during the year. For example, while wood furniture from China grew the aforementioned 8.3% for the year, it was up a meager 1.5% in the fourth quarter. Vietnam was the opposite, growing 27.3% for the year but 38.8% in the fourth quarter.

Perhaps the biggest shift was in cut-and-sewn fabric covers, which grew 32.3% in the first half of 2006 but fell 15% and 13.9% in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Of course, you know that 90% of those covers came from China last year.

Upholstered furniture from China has grown 56.4% a year over the last decade, but through 2005 more than 80% was leather. In 2006, Chinese upholstery imports grew to $1.6 billion from 2005's $1.1 billion, but just over 60% of the 2006 shipments were leather. In 2006, fabric upholstery imports from China nearly tripled to about $625 million.

While imported bedding was only 6.3% of all bedding sold in 2006 (wood imports accounted for 50.9% of that category and upholstery imports for 20.8%), bedding imports grew 15.9% for the full year vs. 6.4% for domestic shipments. In the fourth quarter, however, domestic bedding slowed to a 2.1% gain while imports exploded 23.5%, with China showing a 45.4% gain — off a relatively small base, of course.

It gets more exciting every day, doesn't it?

Author Information

W.W. "Jerry" Epperson Jr. is a managing director of Mann, Armistead & Epperson Ltd., 119 Shockoe Slip, Richmond, Va., an investment banking and research company that specializes in the furniture sector.

Share this on

Attention, all number lovers! Here’s a bunch

Mar 20, 2007

Also by this author

Also by Jerry Epperson

Featured Company

FurnitureCore.com

FurnitureCore.com is a dynamic web application aimed at the furniture industry. Retailers and manufacturers alike will find our deep reserve of tools to be exactly what their furniture business needs.www.furniturecore.com... more