Channel Wars - November 2009

By Santo Torcivia

Like a report card, the preliminary results of the U.S. Census of Retail Trade were recently published and its results are astonishing. The census is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau of all U.S. retailers and it is performed every five years in the years ending in 2 and 7. It’s full of all sorts of details and the latest report is especially important in what it indicates.

Retail floorcovering consists of two primary channels, flooring and carpet stores, and home centers. Flooring stores are pretty self-evident and they include the corner carpet store up to major chains like Lumber Liquidators and Floor & Décor Outlets.

Home centers are a bit more complicated. In this article, home centers refer mainly to Home Depot and Lowe’s. I should point out that the Census of Retail Trade and this analysis do not include flooring contractors (they are part of the Census of Construction). However, even though the sales of flooring and ceramic tile contractors are not part of this analysis, this analysis is still useful in chronicling the changes between the appropriate retail channels. Also, when referring to Home Depot, we believe figures include the warehouse home centers and Expo stores but not their contractor firms.

For the complete Channel Wars story, see the November 2009 issue of Floor Focus Magazine.

Copyright 2009 Floor Focus 

Related Topics:U.S. Census Bureau, Lumber Liquidators