As many of you already know, the furniture industry is on fire right now – both online and offline. We’re so excited about recent news like Wayfair pricing its initial public offering last week and ecommerce giant Alibaba’s record-breaking IPO earlier this summer. But there’s a lot more great news swirling around out there about furniture retailers, especially those setting omnichannel practices into motion. Here are six of our favorite trends showing just how hot the furniture industry and appetite for omnichannel is:
1.The Top 100 US furniture stores posted a combined 7.8% sales increase in 2013, making this the fourth consecutive annual sales gain for the Top 100.
And we’re very proud to say that all of our current US clients are in the Top 12!
2. The nation’s Top 25 furniture and bedding retailers grew sales by 6% last year.
American Signature, a Blueport platform client, took the #18 spot.
3. Two furniture retailers placed in the top five 2014 Hot 100 Retailers list for the first time ever.
In the annual list compiled by Kantar Retail and published by the National Retail Federation, Wayfair came in second and Conn’s HomePlus fourth. Additional furniture retailers on this year’s list include Overstock.com, Jordan’s Furniture, Nebraska Furniture Mart and Crate and Barrel.
4. Consumers have boosted their annual furniture spending since the end of the recession in 2009.
5. Non-furniture retailers are expanding existing or launching new home lines.
Urban Outfitters retail group announced it plans to grow its home category business by 5%. Its Anthropologie stores will be sizing back its apparel business from 71% to 53% to allow for a greater focus on home.
6. Several multichannel retailers posted increases in revenue in the second quarter, 2014, including:
- Williams Sonoma: +5.8% in revenue, driven by ecommerce and catalog business
- Pier 1: +5.8% sales, also driven by a rapidly growing ecommerce business
- Restoration Hardware +13.5% in revenue, with catalog and ecommerce business accounting for nearly half of total revenue!
Blueport Commerce has anticipated this unprecedented opportunity for the furniture industry for quite some time, first emerging as Furniture.com in the early 2000s. Today we are an evolved player in the omnichannel space, enabling furniture retailers with the technology and know-how to be competitive and profitable around their existing channels every day. That’s why three out of the Top five traditional furniture retailers* work with us. Having carved out a niche with furniture retailers and the intricacies of their businesses over the last decade, Blueport Commerce is on the rise – and perfectly timed for the appetite of today’s marketplace and an industry that’s really just beginning to heat up.
*Source: May 2014 Furniture|Today Top 100
