2019 Update on Overstocked Home Furnishings

Quick Facts on Home Improvement Stores:

• Generated $188.0 billion in revenue in 2018
• Annual growth rate averaging 1.9% for the five years to 2019
• Growth of 0.9% projected for the next five years

(data provided by IBISWorld)

The Home Furnishings industry provides a long list of products necessary for the building, furnishing, decorating, and upgrading of homes. This list includes everything from lumber and other structural materials to tools, plumbing, and electrical. Also included are appliances, kitchen goods, housewares, and lawn and garden supplies. How well this industry performs is closely related to the housing market and if homes are selling (or not selling). According to the June 2019 issue of the Great American Group’s Monitor, throughout 2019, existing home sales have decreased, but the number of homes available for sale is on the rise. Typically, a growth in the housing market eventually leads to consumers needing newly purchased furniture and appliances, but slowing growth could lead to fewer furniture and home furnishing sales.

Home Furnishings, E-commerce & Direct Fulfillment

For top home furnishing retailers such as Amazon, Wayfair, and Overstock, e-commerce and direct fulfillment have made an impact on traditional furniture and home furnishings retailers; with practices such as free shipping on heavy items such as couches/sofas, traditional brick and mortar furniture companies that operate out of warehouses are having a hard time competing. According to Great American (GA), e-commerce has lead Wayfair to reach $7.3 billion in annual sales, a 41.7% yoy growth.

Direct fulfillment is a supply chain strategy where the e-commerce retailer will transfer individual customer orders to a supplier that ships the goods directly to the customer. This practice allows retailers to offer products they don’t normally carry, but can still sell to consumers through an established network of vendors. According to GA, while this method of shipment benefits retailers by allowing them to keep less inventory on hand, it can create possible inventory risks for manufacturers and distributors.

Overstocked Home Furnishings Manufacturers turn to B-Stock

For manufacturers and retailers of home furnishings with overstocked and returned merchandise—which happens during slow home sales regardless of quality or condition of product—an efficient and recovery-generating liquidation solution becomes necessary. A modern liquidation solution helps retailers and manufacturers from hitting warehouse capacity, keeps supply lines moving, and offers a better way to recover from the increased costs of shipping, processing, sorting, and reselling. Read how Wayfair built a scalable B2B marketplace solution for its customer returns and excess inventory.

B-Stock operates the world’s largest B2B marketplace for returned, excess, and other liquidation inventory. The marketplace connects retailers and manufacturers directly to an established network of professional business resellers, with no jobber middleman. These vetted resellers use B-Stock to source inventory for their own resale and clearance stores in geographic locations without major box store chains.

For more information, we invite you to peruse our private, branded marketplaces where nine out of the top 10 U.S. retailers auction off merchandise that can no longer be placed on shelves as new.

You can also check out our success stories and case studies.

To get started, request a demo.