Springs and WPS continue to fill the cart

NEW YORK The country's two largest home textiles mills still have a big presence in hi/low market baskets at the top 10 home textiles retailers, according to Home Textiles Today's third annual market basket report.

Springs Industries and WestPoint Stevens together accounted for nearly 50 percent of the 225 items in this year's survey whose manufacturers were identifiable on packaging or accessible tags. Springs and WestPoint each accounted for 24 percent of the 225 items. There were 290 individual items across the spectrum of the market baskets.

For the annual market basket report, HTT assembles a list of basic bed and bath items, then visits one store from each of the top 10 home textiles retailers to find the lowest priced item and the highest priced item for each product on the shopping list. Only items marked at everyday prices are considered. Sale and clearance goods are not added to the cart, except at Mervyn's — where all quilts and shower curtains in the store were found to be on sale.

In two stores, not all items were available. Neither the Wal-Mart nor the JCPenney visited by HTT offered bath sheets.

While the market baskets are not representative of a chain's "average market basket," they do represent what a customer who shopped these stores in these markets — during the period between Feb. 22 and March 3 — would have found if they were looking for either the least expensive goods or the presumed top-of-the-line goods.

This year's survey also made one crucial switch in the product assortment: swapping a queen-sized bed-in-a-bag for the top-of-bed item that had been included in previous surveys, a queen comforter. HTT determined the bed-in-a-bag would be more representative of the type of item selected by the average consumer. For this reason, the 2004 survey does not include year-over-year price comparisons between baskets.

Despite switching to the all-inclusive ensemble, HTT left a queen-sized bed sheet set on the list, since many bed-in-a-bag households have at least one set of back-up sheets.

Aside from the two big mills, only six of the other identifiable suppliers popped up in the market basket more than four times. Mohawk Home, Keeco and Allure each appeared six times across the survey. Forte-Fairbairn, a Turkish company, appeared eight times — all at Target. Croscill logged 10, Dan River 11, WestPoint 53 and Springs 54.

Market baskets from Wal-Mart and Kmart produced by far the lowest ratio of U.S.-made goods, with 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively. At all other stores visited by HTT, U.S. products accounted for at least one quarter of the total basket. Baskets from just four stores were more than half filled with U.S. goods: JCPenney, 52 percent; Mervyn's, 53 percent; Bed Bath & Beyond, 55 percent; and Sears, 56 percent.

As has been the case each year in the survey, Bed Bath & Beyond's basket of top price points outstripped the others, and Wal-Mart logged the lowest market basket total for both its top-priced basket and lowest priced basket.

Interestingly, Target Corp.'s discount store produced more upper price points than its mid-tier unit. The Target Store's top-price basket rang up at $591.83 compared to Mervyn's $426.31.

Following the predictable trend, products made in China jumped from 24 percent of the total items in last year's survey to 35 percent of the 327 items whose country of origin was disclosed on tagging or packaging. The ratio of products made entirely in the United States dropped for the third straight year in a row, this time accounting for 41 percent of the total market basket items. In 2003, U.S.-made products accounted for 50 percent of the basket, down from 57 percent in 2002.

Only five of the 327 items were hybrids, produced in more than one country. Four were found at Wal-Mart, all made by Springs, and one was at Kohl's, supplier unidentifiable from the packaging.