Shifting channels nudge rug sales

By Cecile B. Corral -- Home Textiles Today, 6/16/2003 12:00:00 AM

NEW YORK —

Rugs of all sizes and price points found their niche on stores' sales floors in 2002, as numbers from HTT's annual The Facts study proved.

The industry — which includes accent, scatter and area rugs — experienced fervent growth during this one-year period of 12.5 percent to $6.3 billion — a rate that might seem surprising to some considering the sluggish state of the economy in 2002.

Several factors were attributed to this growth spurt, including a stronger concentration on imported goods, improved marketing efforts of smaller-size rugs and stronger placements at home improvement chains.

The study found slight shifts occurred in retail for market share, at times resulting in a sea change in real dollar volume.

Home centers felt the most substantial growth on both counts — market share rose by 2 percent, leading to a 58 percent leap in sales to $441 million.

Home specialty chains also gained. A 1 percent pick-up in market share yielded a 27 percent jump in volume, growing to $567 million from 2001's $446 million.

Those gains came largely at the expense of other channels, particularly two that historically have held the largest shares of this product category's market: department stores, which dropped 3 points to a 14 percent share; and discount department stores, which lost a point, dipping to a still-dominant 28 percent share.

Despite these losses, only department stores experienced a decline in actual sales volume, dropping 7 percent to $882 million for the segment. Discount store sales still increased 9 percent last year, to nearly $1.8 billion.