It's so bad, even imports dipped in latest quarter
Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, September 23, 2007
If you like statistics, you've come to the right column. Complexities abound, along with changes of direction, spurts, stops and spins. Yes, we're talking about furniture imports.
In the second quarter, business overall had a bad odor to it, probably because we were selling a lot of old inventory at low, low prices. Even the Department of Commerce said furniture store sales declined in June, after reporting that sales had been up all year.
How bad is bad? Domestic wood furniture shipments declined 8.6% in the second quarter — no surprise — but wood furniture imports from China did worse, dropping 11.6% in the quarter. Canadian wood furniture imports declined 12.6%, and there were weak shipments from Malaysia, Italy, Mexico, Thailand and Brazil.
Indonesia, our fifth-largest supplier of wood furniture, grew 7.8%, and Vietnam, now our third-largest supplier, surged an impressive 26.9%. Even so, Vietnam is only bringing in 20% of the volume we get from China. Total wood residential furniture imports fell 7.2% in the second quarter.
Three of our four largest upholstered furniture source countries experienced double-digit declines: Mexico (16.8%), Italy (35.3%) and Canada (13.3%). That was partially offset by our largest upholstery source, China, with a 4.6% gain, so that total upholstery imports were down a modest 1.4% in the second quarter. Domestic upholstery shipments dropped 3.6%.
China clearly dominates, at least in volume, the global leather upholstery market, and beginning last year has made dramatic gains in fabric upholstery. In 2006, fabric upholstery from China grew 177%, and recently Brookwood said it would join Davis International and Schnadig in selling only imported upholstery.
This shift is also reflected in a decline in the volume of fabric cut-and-sewn kits being imported and used on U.S.-made frames. Imported fabric covers fell 9.9% in the second quarter versus last year.
By our measure, 24.5% of all upholstered furniture sold here in the second quarter was imported, versus 8.6% a decade ago. In 1997, our largest source was Italy, with $311 million in imported upholstery — mostly leather — or more than 11 times the amount from China. In the latest quarter, China shipped us 13 times more upholstered furniture than Italy.
Thank heavens for bedding! Domestic bedding shipments grew 5.5% in the latest quarter, and while total imports were down 11%, imported bedding from Mexico was up 10.7%. Bedding from China was essentially flat.
Stay tuned.
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