Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Big Shipper Reports Consumers Holding Off on Big Purchases
July 16,
2025 by Karen Parrish in Business Strategy, Industry 
According to a story originally on Investopedia, Americans are holding off on furniture and other big—meaning both in terms of size and price—purchases, according to a big shipping company.
JB Hunt Transport Services is seeing tepid demand for “final mile” deliveries of large items, Chief Operating Officer Nick Hobbs said on a conference call Tuesday. Hobbs doesn’t expect a shift toward big purchases any time this year, he added.
Slow furniture sales are straining other companies, including luxury furniture retailer RH (RH) and Culp, a North Carolina-based upholstery firm. "Historically low" demand for home furnishing has weighed on fabric sales, CULP CEO Robert Culp IV said last month.
“The end markets in this business remain challenged with demand for big and bulky products still muted, with soft demand for furniture, exercise equipment and appliances,” Hobbs said, according to a transcript made available by AlphaSense.
Furniture Business in 'A Bit of a Malaise'
Americans were not undertaking renovations or buying many appliances and big-ticket items this fall because of the tight housing market, Home Depot (HD) and Lowe’s (LOW) said. Sales have since picked up, although the growth may be coming from consumers trying to get ahead of tariffs, rather than shifts in underlying demand, experts have said.
"Our industry has been in a bit of a malaise,” La-Z-Boy (LZB) CEO Melinda Whittington said on a conference call last month. “But if the consumer is overall more strapped because of the broader macroeconomic trends, they will tend to stretch out their furniture purchases.”
A number of consumers appear to have timed their purchase of appliances, electronics and other pricey items to coincide with major sales at Amazon (AMZN), Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT), Adobe said.
Meanwhile, “off-price retail” items have been keeping JB Hunt busy, Hobbs said Tuesday. The company reported slightly stronger second-quarter revenue than expected.