Upholstery Sales Show Strong Increase, Wood Dips Slightly - AFMA Releases Year-End Report For 2002

Furniture World Magazine

Wholesale sales of residential wood furniture dipped slightly last year, but upholstery sales rose nearly 11% over the previous year, according to just-released year-end numbers from the American Furniture Manufacturers Association. Industry shipments of wood household furniture totaled $10.672 billion last year, a decline of 1.8% from shipments of $10.863 in 2001, the year-end report shows. Upholstery shipments totaled $10.928 billion in 2002, an increase of 10.9% over total shipments of $9.852 billion the previous year. AFMA had predicted in December that wood shipments would increase slightly in 2002 and upholstery shipments would increase 9.3%. “Upholstery actually performed a little better than we had expected, but wood shipments were not quite as strong as earlier numbers had indicated,” said Joseph P. Logan, AFMA’s vice president of financial services. In its furniture forecast distributed in December, AFMA predicted that overall industry shipments will total $24.411 billion this year and increase to $25.434 billion next year. The American Furniture Manufacturers Association is headquartered in High Point, N.C. – the furniture capital of the world – and represents more than 200 leading U.S. furniture manufacturers and 250 suppliers to the industry.