Flooring Industry News October 2022

The Flooring Show confirms popularity

The Flooring Show reported outstanding attendance for the event last month, despite missing a day of business in observance of The Queen’s burial.

Despite the 60th anniversary exhibition in Harrogate being shortened from a three-day event to just two days due to extraordinary last-minute adjustments, attendance at the event was close to 3,000, which was comparable to prior years.

Read the article in The Stocklists.

Flooring inflation falls

Retail inflation for flooring has decreased to its lowest level in more than a year, falling to 7% in September from 8.1% in August.

This contrasts with the U.K.’s total retail price inflation rate of 10.1% and the overall growth rate of the furniture industry, which is still twice that of the flooring industry at 14%.

Read the article in The Stocklists.

Major purchases index

Since the beginning of the pandemic in May 2020, the GfK survey that analyses consumer confidence on “big-ticket” purchases like flooring and furniture has dropped 3 further points to minus 41 for October.

As UK consumers struggle with the “new abnormal” amidst uncertainty and turbulence, overall consumer confidence increased by 2 points to minus 47.

Director of Client Strategy at GfK, Joe Staton, comments: “”With an Overall Index Score of -47 in October, UK consumer confidence remained shaky near to last month’s historic low. All key metrics are still, however, quite down. The primary purchase measure fell by three points, continuing a strong downward trend that started in July 2021. This is especially concerning for the year’s fourth quarter; when many companies rely on it to improve their balance sheets.”

Read the article in The Stocklists.

Consumers avoiding big-ticket buys

According to the British Retail Consortium, consumers’ reluctance to make large purchases like furniture and carpeting is seen in the most recent sales figures.

On a like-for-like basis, UK retail sales grew 1.8% from September 2021; however, when food and grocery were excluded, there was a 1% decline.

According to Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium, “While UK retail sales overall increased in September, this represented another month of falling sales volumes given high levels of inflation. As consumer confidence continued to decline, people shopped cautiously, avoiding large ticket items such as new computers, TVs, and furniture.”

Read the article in The Stocklists.

FURTHER READING

We hope you enjoyed our flooring industry news roundup. We have a huge luxury vinyl flooring range which can be found on these links:

Deep Emboss is our biggest range which gives the look of real wood.

Another very popular range, Herringbone takes smaller tiles from our most popular colours and uses them to create a parquet-effect flooring.

The Tick Finish vinyl flooring range is all about a finer grain for a subtler finish.

The Stone & Granite range delivers the feel of real stone and granite with a refined texture.

With the Shale Finish range, a natural slate-effect is represented with a generous range of colour options and textures.

If you are looking to recreate an old-style distressed wooden flooring look then the Hand Scraped range is perfect.

Our Victoriana collection recreates the iconic British Minton design classic that has been around since the 1800’s.

The Prima range from Ambiance is our entry level LVT. This product delivers a living surface finish that looks and feels great whilst meeting the most challenging budget.

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