Furniture Industry Sales by Retailer Type: 2009 to 2018

March 20, 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 fourth 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 increase at over 20% annually in recent years.

Of the $112.8 billion furniture industry, sales can be distributed between (1) brick and mortar stores, (2) e-commerce retailers plus e-commerce sales by brick and mortar companies, and (3) mail order houses., In 2018, furniture and bedding sales by brick and mortar stores (non-internet) totaled $87 billion compared to $23.9 billion for e-commerce and $1.9 billion from mail order houses.

E-commerce continues to gain a greater share of the furniture industry – jumping from 3.8% of sales in 2009 to 21.2% in 2018. This includes not just sales by e-commerce retailers, but also online sales by brick and mortar retailers of all types – including furniture and home furnishings stores, department stores, warehouse superstores, etc. Meanwhile, brick and mortar share of total sales fell from a 93.5% in share in 2009 to 77.1% in 2018 - decreasing 6.6 percentage points from 2017 to 2018.

Source: Impact Consulting Services Inc.’s FurnitureCore.com proprietary Industry Model; U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Retail Trade (e-commerce) with salves revised Sept. 2019. 2018 preliminary estimates.