Growth and Decline of Furniture Stores Annual Growth in Establishments

March 22, 2019  by Laurie Northington in General   

The retail landscape has evolved over the last ten years and continues to shift as more brick and mortar stores shutter their doors amid a growing e-commerce industry.

This is the third factoid in a series of five factoids detailing the dramatic shifts in the furniture industry’s distribution channels, taking place in both sales and in-store counts. The U.S. became over-stored in many channels during the 1990’s and early 2000’s as developers kept building shopping centers and companies continued opening retail outlets.

This factoid tracks the percent of stores closed from two historical perspectives – (1) 2007 to 2012 during the recession and subsequent slow recovery years, and (2) 2012 to 2018 during economic recovery and high growth. During the recession and the immediate recovery years, furniture stores and home furnishings stores shuttered more locations as a percent of total than any other in the key retail furniture groups, closing stores an annual rate of 3.8 percent over those five years. Meanwhile home furnishings stores closed 3.5 percent of locations each year 2007 to 2012. But these two primary channels took their hits early due to the housing and mortgage crises as did home centers. During the last five years furniture and home furnishings stores lost less than 1 percent of its outlets annually. Meanwhile home centers closed 2.2 percent of stores annually in the five-year recessionary/recovery period and continued to lose 1.2 percent annually 2012 to 2018Q1.

Other retail channels continued to grow during the early recession and post period or had minimal store closing, but have closed stores in recent years. These include department stores and electronics and appliances retailers. The only retailers to continuing opening stores were warehouse clubs and superstores, general merchandise stores, and electronic shopping and mail-order houses (non store retailers).

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages
*2007 to 2012 contains five years of data surrounding the Great Recession; 2012 to 2018 Q1 reflect recovery and economic growth years.