June quarter statistics: How low did we go?
Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, September 28, 2008
How many ways can you say decline, fall, drop, down, decrease, poor, weak, or off? Discussing statistics for the June quarter will test our vocabulary.
According to the Census Bureau, furniture and bedding sales through furniture stores were down 5.4% in the first six months, and were off 4.8% in July. Another retail series, total consumption of furniture and bedding through all routes of distribution, was reported to be off 1.5% in the June quarter.
Does that seem realistic to you? In our opinion, retail sales of home furnishings declined double digits in the second quarter, and we believe some other information backs us up. For example, domestic shipments of wood furniture fell 13.1% in the June quarter. Granted, domestic shipments are only 32% of all wood furniture sold here these days, but the 68% that is imported dropped 6.7%, with wood shipments from China declining 9.8%. Wood imports from Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Italy and Thailand declined 9.8%, 12.9%, 11.8%, 2.5%, 7.6% and 22.4%, respectively. Nine of the top 10 sources of wood furniture imports fell, although Vietnam showed an impressive 24.9% increase. As of this quarter, Vietnam shipped about 28% of the volume we receive from China.
Upholstery shipments in the quarter were about the same. The 70% of upholstered furniture still made in the U.S. was down 12.4%. Imported fabric cut and sewn covers, used by many domestic factories, were down a similar 12.8% in the quarter.
Upholstered furniture imports declined 7.8%, with the top sourcing countries China, Mexico, Italy and Canada declining 2.1%, 31.3%, 1.2% and 22.9%, respectively. Why did Italy drop so little? In 2002, Italy was our largest source of imported upholstered furniture with $536 million in shipments. If you annualize Italy's June quarter, they are on track to import only $160 million, while China is likely to import $2.2 billion of upholstered furniture this year.
Mattress shipments, usually the most stable segment of the home furnishings industry, were down 8.4% in domestic product in the June quarter, the most severe decline in memory. Imported mattresses, which account for only 4.4% of consumption, managed a less than impressive 0.3% increase, with sharp declines from China and Canada offset by gains from Mexico.
Please remember that all of these statistics are in U.S. dollars, not units. With the price increases we are experiencing, the unit declines would be much worse.
By the way, the average sales decline among U.S. public furniture companies in the most recent quarter was 9.8%.
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