Furniture Industry Growth by Outlet Type

October 19, 2018  by Laurie Northington in General   

This is the second factoid in a series of five factoids detailing the rise of e-commerce in the furniture industry. As many brick and mortar stores search for strategies to compete with giant online retailers, those same retailers are looking for ways to remain profitable.

The total furniture and bedding industry grew 3.9 percent last year. It is estimated that brick and mortar store sales of furniture grew only 2 percent while e-commerce retailer sales grew 12.9 percent. 

Over the course of seven years since the bottom of the recession in 2009 furniture sales through e-commerce have grown at an annual rate (CAGR) of 22.2 percent compared to brick and mortar retailers at 3.0 percent.  Total industry sales have grown at an annual rate of 5.1 percent.

Annual year-over-year growth of the three outlet types

The rate of e-commerce sales peaked at 26 percent in 2015, but has slowed somewhat over the last two years to 12.9 percent in 2017.  Meanwhile, brick and mortar sales have struggled to reach 2 percent growth over the last two years.

Along with furniture e-commerce sales, other home furnishing products – floor covering, window treatments and home accessories – have grown at an even faster pace and surpass furniture in online sales. Consumers are still finding it easier and less daunting to buy home furnishings online without seeing or touching them in a store. While furniture e-commerce sales have grown from over 300 percent since 2009 (bottom of the recession) totaling $19.7 billion last year, home furnishings have grown 489 percent to $27.7 billion in 2017.

Source: Impact Consulting Services Inc.’s FurnitureCore.com proprietary Industry Model; U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey or Retail Trade (e-commerce) with all sales revised in March 2017. 2017 preliminary estimates