Online sales march on but furniture spend is falling, says industry pioneer

19th February | online | The growth in overall online sales is masking heavy falls in the amount of cash consumers are spending on furniture on the Internet.  That’s the view of Julian Field, ceo of Furniture123, the UK’s first online furniture retailer.

Figures from web consultancy IMRG earlier this week reported a 19% year on year growth in the value of online sales, but Field says the success of fashion retailers such as ASOS and M&M Direct is covering up the shortcomings of others, including many big-ticket retailers selling furniture.

He said, ‘You have online youth fashion retailers that are between 50-100% up year on year but you also have retailers of big-ticket items such as furniture and electricals that are significantly down, with a number of those going out of business.’

He cites www.empiredirect.com, www.qed-uk.com and www.bedeezee.com as high profile online casualties during the course of the past year.

‘If people are making decisions now to invest in online retail businesses selling big-ticket items based on aggregate statistics for the online market as a whole they risk losing a significant amount of money,’ he warned.

The slowdown in growth lends weight to Field’s view. While online spend grew 19% in the year to January 2009, the previous year to January 2008 saw a much larger sales uplift of 75%.

Reader Response: Why indies still need to invest in an online store

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