Daily News Archive
Brought to you by Home Furnishings Business
September 12,
2006 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on September 2006
Two executives with The Home Depot will present at an investment conference next week.
Frank Blake, executive vice president of business development and corporate operations, and Carl C. Liebert III, executive vice president for Home Depot stores, will present at the Bank of America 36th Annual Investment Conference in San Francisco. The presentation is slated to being at 11 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday, Sept. 20.
The presentation will be webcast live over the Internet at homedepot.com. On the home page, select Investor Relations and a link will be displayed under Executive Presentations. The webcast will be archived and available at the same location.
September 12,
2006 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on September 2006
Traffic at the nation’s major retail container ports has already topped the highest level hit during 2005 and will set additional new records before the 2006 peak shipping season is over, according to the September Port Tracker report from the National Retail Federation and Global Insight.
“The system is handling volumes that have never been seen before, thanks mainly to continued growth in the demand for Asian imports,” Global Insight Economist Paul Bingham said. “Despite the growth in volume, the outlook is for continued acceptable performance over the next six months. Shippers should be able to make it through the remainder of the peak season without significant congestion.”
All ports covered by Port Tracker–Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma and Seattle on the West Coast, and New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah on the East Coast–are currently rated “low” for congestion, the same as last month.
Nationwide, the ports surveyed handled 1.38 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) of container traffic in July, the most recent month for which actual numbers are available. One TEU is a 20-foot cargo container or its equivalent. The figure was up 1.7 percent from June and 7.1 percent from July 2005.
July’s number topped 2005’s year-long peak of 1.37 million TEUs set last October, and numbers well above the 2005 peak are expected to be hit through the remainder of the season: August is forecast at 1.44 million TEUs (up 8 percent from August 2005), September at 1.4 million (up 4.1 percent from September 2005) and October–the traditional annual peak of the shipping season–at 1.45 million (up 6.2 percent from October 2005). During the remainder of the six-month forecast, numbers will drop off but will still remain higher than year-ago numbers. November is forecast at 1.34 million TEUs (up 6.1 percent from November 2005), December at 1.3 million (up 7.9 percent from December 2005), and January at 1.24 million (up 2.2 percent from January 2006).
Port Tracker, which is produced by the economic research, forecasting and analysis firm Global Insight for NRF, examines inbound container volume, the availability of trucks and railroad cars to move cargo out of the ports, labor conditions and other factors that affect cargo movement and congestion.
September 12,
2006 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on September 2006
Canadian research firm Aktrin predicts that U.S. consumer spending on household furniture will grow 5.9 percent in 2006 compared to last year.
After a 4.7 percent increase in U.S. furniture consumption in 2005, Aktrin predicts that that the market will grow to around $84 billion this year. Next year, Aktrin anticipates a slower growth rate of 4.3 percent, which would equal around $87 billion at retail.
Personal income growth is one of Aktrin’s most important leading indicators for predicting furniture consumption. Helped by increased job creation last year, personal income may hold up better than the economy as a whole. Income growth stood at 5.2 percent in 2005, and probably will accelerate to 7.1 percent this year. In conjunction with less robust employment growth in 2006, however, Aktrin believes income growth may slow down a bit next year, but believes personal income growth will remain above the 5 percent mark. Accounting for inflation and taxes, the anticipated growth rate of real disposable income will be much less, that is only about 3 percent this year and 2.7 percent next year--still a respectable rate compared to the 1.2 percent increase in 2005.
Real GDP grew at a healthy rate of 5.6 percent (annualized, seasonally adjusted) in the first quarter of 2006. This positive picture changed significantly in the second quarter, with a growth rate of only 2.9 percent. While Aktrin said second-half growth may fall below 2.5 percent, due to the good showing at the beginning of 2006, average GDP growth for this year as a whole may lie around 3.5 percent, higher than the 3.2 percent rate in 2005. The average rate next year may be only around the 2.7 percent mark, which would be the lowest during the past five years.
Growth of American consumer spending stood at 3.5 percent last year, according to the Aktrin report. Due to higher interest rates, it will lag behind the growth of personal income, and probably fall below 3 percent in 2007.
The durable consumer goods market is subject to erratic fluctuations as such goods are quite sensitive to interest rates. After growing at 9 percent in the third quarter of 2005, it fell by a staggering 12.3 percent in the last quarter, only to rise again to 19.8 percent in the first quarter of this year (all rates are annualized). The average annual growth of durable good consumption last year amounted to 5.5 percent. It will grow only at an estimated 4.7 percent in 2006 and decline further to below 3 percent next year.
Thanks to low mortgage rates, residential construction was a very strong sector of the American economy in 2004 and 2005. The value growth during those two years amounted to 9.9 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively. The housing market is now oversupplied and is predicted to suffer a 2.1 percent decline this year and an even larger decline of close to 5 percent next year. In volume terms, this translates to 2.07 million new housing units in 2005, but only an expected 1.88 million in 2006.
September 11,
2006 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on September 2006
Furniture retail purchasing trends posted an increase in August for the first time in two months, with a better than 9 percent jump over August 2005.
That’s according to the FurnishNet Index, which tracks buying activity among the more than 800 retailers, manufacturers and suppliers using its electronic transaction exchange services.
August purchasing activity pushed the index’s year-to-date purchases 2.6 percent ahead of 2005, while month-to-month purchases rose dramatically in August compared to July--the second-highest upswing of the year, climbing 51.3 percent over the prior month.
That month-to-month increase also was much greater than the 16.4 percent increase from July to August 2005
For a complete view of the August issue of the FurnishNet Index, visit http://www.furnishnet.com/company/fnet_index.html
September 11,
2006 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Retail Technology on September 2006
While many consumers remain reluctant to make big-ticket purchases such as furniture online, more and more are using the Internet as a key part of their shopping process, according to the August Consumer Behavior Report from PriceGrabber.com.
PriceGrabber is a Web-based shopping comparison engine that claims more than 21 million unique users a month and daily pricing supplied by more than 11,000 merchants.
PriceGrabber surveyed 1,417 online shoppers in June, and found that online merchant referrals for furniture rose 92 percent in the six months from December 2005 to June 2006. Seventy-four percent of respondents said they’ll research online before making their next furniture purchase, while 23 percent expect to increase their level of actual online purchasing in the furniture and major appliance categories.
The good news for retailers is that 91 percent of PriceGrabber’s respondents said they’ll most likely make their actual furniture purchase at a local retail store, but more than 80 percent said that an offer of free delivery would make them more likely to buy online.