Top 25 sources register ho-hum gain of 1.2%
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, December 31, 2005
HIGH POINT — HIGH POINT — As a group, the largest U.S. furniture sources notched a ho-hum 1.2% sales gain last year, for a total of $13.5 billion.
By 2003 standards, that wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible, either.
Accounting and consulting firm BDO Seidman said U.S. furniture factories' shipments declined 1% from 2002 to 2003, to $25.1 billion. The figure includes some components and finished goods imported by U.S. companies.
Furniture imports rose 8% last year to $15.6 billion, according to government statistics and Furniture/Today market research.
Most of the Top 25 are active importers, and four are based outside the United States and import most or all of their products.
Industry analyst Jerry Epperson of Mann, Armistead & Epperson in Richmond, Va., calculated the size of the U.S. wholesale market for furniture and bedding at $42.9 billion for 2003, a 3.1% increase from 2002.
Epperson takes U.S. shipments, subtracts exports and adds imports plus a value-added component for imports.
By all those measures, 2003 represented a slowdown for the industry's growth compared with 2002. U.S. factory shipments were up 2.5% in 2002, imports grew 13.8%, and the market size, according to Epperson, increased 8.4%.
