29 March 2024, 09:12
By Furniture News Feb 04, 2020

£17.5b spent on furniture and furnishings, reveals association analysis

The latest Statistics Digest for the UK Furniture Industry has been released by the Furniture Industry Research Association.

A barometer for the furniture sector, the latest digest reveals that despite all the uncertainty surrounding Brexit in 2018, turnover for the combined furniture and furnishings manufacturing sectors was £12.2b – a YoY increase of +3.1%, with furniture manufacturing turning over £9.01b.

Turning to total consumer expenditure, this increased between 2015-18 to £1302b (a +7.9% increase over the period, and +1.6% YoY. Expenditure on furniture and furnishings was almost £17b in 2018 and far exceeded all other spend in the sector. This represented YoY growth of +10.5%. The most significant growth in expenditure was in the furnishings, household equipment and routine maintenance sector, which exceeded £60b for the first time (£63.32b).

The latest data shows that furniture and furnishings sales continued to rise into 2019, with Q1 and Q2 consumer expenditures being respectively +5.8% and +4.8% higher than the equivalent periods in 2018. In 2018, sales of £16.7b accounted for 26.4% of overall sector sales, a slight increase on the 2017 figure of 25.9%.

The 2018 figures show that there were 8707 companies employing 123,000 individuals across the furniture and furnishings sector, while the wider sector, including specialist retail, but excluding general retail, comprised over 52,500 VAT-registered companies supporting 339,000 jobs.

In terms of product sales, imports decreased fractionally to 51.2% of the home market which, based on manufacturing, export and import data, was estimated to be £12.04b. Imports of furniture into the UK in 2018 decreased by -2.3% to £6.17b compared with the previous year’s figure of £6.31b. Indications for 2019 are that this figure could decrease further to around £6.06b due to continuing uncertainty surrounding the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU.

The majority of imports again originated from China (£2.02b), with its share of imports into the UK dipping slightly to 32.8% when compared to 34% the previous year.

Furniture exports continued to grow in recent years from £1.06b in 2016 to £1.25b in 2018 (18.7% over the period). YoY export growth between 2017-18 of 5.6% accounted for an additional £66.4m. Exports to Europe have grown over the period from 2016-18 by +24.5% with YoY growth of +7.7% between 2017-18 (£55.76m). There was a significant YoY increase of UK furniture exports to the UAE (+23.8%), which received 2.5% of all UK furniture exports, and moved from 10th to eighth position with a total value of £32.22m.

2018 saw the negative trade gap narrow from £5.13b to £4.92b, although the decrease was slightly less than preliminary figures released in 2017 suggested. Initial figures indicate that the gap may reduce further to -£4.87b by the end of 2019.

The digest is available at no charge to Furniture Industry Research Association members here. Non-members can purchase a copy, priced at £2000+VAT, here. See the March issue of Furniture News for the full executive summary, plus feedback from the digest's author, Suzie Radcliffe-Hart.

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