A big universe
Becky Boswell Smith -- Home Accents Today, 12/1/2006
Maybe it's because I've been immersed in numbers for a couple of months, which is not a place most editors like to find themselves, but the onslaught of post-Thanksgiving stories about shopping is simply too much.
Numbers of shoppers are down, sales are up. Consumers plan to spend more, no I meant less. They're shopping brick and mortar stores; oops, they're buying online while they're at work. Wal-Mart comp store sales are down for November, but they're doing big sales on the Web.
It's a huge conundrum, for sure. The quick answer is all of the above is happening. And it's difficult for analysts and the rest of us to get an accurate picture.
It's a murky situation.
All of this parallels the data the Home Accents Today research team and I have been collecting and analyzing for the past several months as we have prepared the 2006 Universe Study in this issue.
This is the fifth Universe Study we have published, every two years getting more detailed information from companies and consumers, revising and adjusting for greater accuracy. This time around, for example, two major players, Target and Home Depot, were more specific in reporting home sales, so we revised their numbers by $1.8 billion and $475 million respectively.
As big a challenge as estimating the size of the various product categories is getting a good grasp of the growth in the various channels of distribution.
Talk about a murky situation.
We report a store's numbers in the original channel in which it is classified. For example, JCPenney and Neiman-Marcus are department stores that do not separate their online sales or, in the case of N-M, their Horchow catalog sales.
That gets murky.
We know the Internet is growing like topsy, with eBay saying 27% of all purchases in 2005 were influenced by the Internet, and BIGresearch reporting 87% of shoppers regularly research purchases online before buying in person or in a store.
A company spokeswoman also tells us a table lamp is sold on eBay every six minutes. Impressive, but they don't know if those are used, new or exactly what a table lamp is.
Did I say the entire channel picture is getting murky?
But with all that said, we believe we are presenting the most comprehensive report on the size of our industry and we hope you find it informative.
Let's talk about it in more detail when we meet at the January shows.
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