Specialty, Department Stores Inch Up

By Carole Sloan -- Home Textiles Today, 7/14/2008 12:00:00 AM

New York —

Specialty stores and department stores inched up in their share of distribution of home textiles among the HTT Top 50 Retailing Giants for 2007.

Of the seven retailing channels analyzed for the Top 50 home textiles ranking, three held their own — discount stores/supercenters, warehouse clubs, home improvement centers — and two fell behind in share: direct-to-consumer and home improvement centers.

While the big discounters still command the largest share among the Top 50 retailers, the channel's sales increased a scant 1.8% to $10.3 billion over the prior year.

** For the complete report, see the July 14 print issue of HTT, or purchase the electronic report on our online Research Store athttp://www.reedbusinessstore.com/htt.html