E-commerce Growth
February 28,
2020 by Laurie Northington in General 
E-commerce furniture and home furnishings websites continue to chip away at brick and mortar retailers, reporting a double-digit growth of 22% in 2018 compared to single-digit growth by other furniture and home furnishings retail channels.
This is the first factoid in a series of five factoids detailing how despite predictions that the rate of e-commerce growth in the furniture industry would slow, e-commerce sales have continued at over 20% annually in recent years.
Total U.S. E-commerce
Internet sales of all consumer products from all retail outlet types, e-commerce companies or brick and mortar stores selling from internet websites, are estimated to have reached $524 billion in 2018.
In 2018, overall online/e-commerce retail purchases for all consumer products slowed, but still grew 3.6 times faster than all other retail channels. At $269 billion year-to-date, e-commerce growth is 5.9 times faster than the first half of 2018. Total retail sales increased by 5% from 2017 to 2018, compared to 14% for e-commerce.
A recent report published by the Census Bureau segments sales by e-commerce retailers by merchandise lines through 2017 giving a glimpse at penetration by product category.
Among different types of e-commerce retailers, online sales of furniture and home furnishings products was the third highest product category in sales at $48.7 billion – increasing 22.3% from 2016 to 2017 (Figure 2). Ranking number one in sales growth, computer software including video games, grew by 23.9% to reach $15.4 billion in 2017. At $66.7 billion, clothing and clothing accessories had the highest sales among e-commerce retailers and with an annual increase of 11%.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual and monthly survey of retail sales
*Total E-commerce sales, both from e-tailers and brick and mortar stores through a website.
**most recent data available through 2017.