Flooring shows it can rise to the challenge
The show must go on – and whether it’s Covid or the so sad passing of Her Majesty, not to mention the rollercoaster of consumer confidence and the cost-of-living crisis – Harrogate is still the place where it happens and where flooring people show their flexibility to make the best out of a challenging market.
While the stands respectfully fell silent for funeral on the Monday, exhibitors benefited from busy days on both Sunday and Tuesday with a high standard of presentation from leading companies, and there was a reassuring degree of new product development
on show.
After the bonus for many of the pandemic pent-up demand, clearly there is nervousness about the weeks and months ahead. Flooring companies can’t control the size of the market – but they’re pushing hard to secure the biggest possible share of whatever is available. And that’s good for retailers.
A key theme in an encouragingly large presentation of new products, is a move up market – recognising that even if sales are fewer, they need to be worth more to both retailers and suppliers. And also, there needs to be more reasons to persuade consumers in the middle market to purchase.
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The business snapshot is that summer trading has taken a serious hit at 20 to 25% down but this masks the huge impact on entry-level and lower cost trading, down as much as 50% say some with faint hope of recovery this year, while the middle market is holding out much better. There is a hope that the energy price freeze (not yet fully appreciated due to the Royal funeral) is going to go some way to support sales from now until Christmas.
While no one wants to predict how 2023 will turn out, let’s not be too downbeat – it’s highly likely that almost everyone in the industry will be ahead of the numbers when you take both 2021 and 2022 into account.
Manufacturers, however, wait to see how energy costs – and government support for industry – impacts their margins.
Making carpet and LVT is a hungry business for energy – and more than one manufacturer told us that the summer downturn was not unhelpful and allowing production to be scaled back while costs were at their highest.
THANK YOU, MA'AM
Tributes to the duty, service and constancy of HM The Queen's reign were all about at the show but two fine examples we noted were the hand-made carpet cameos made by Hugh Mackay (below left) and Adam Carpets (with Chris Adam, right).
