From the WSJ Real Estate Archives

Retailers Now Offer
More Seasonal Textiles

by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
From The Wall Street Journal Online

February 22, 2005 -- In the latest move by retailers to get consumers to replace home furnishings more frequently, Ikea will begin offering four collections of bed and bath linens a year, instead of the traditional annual rollout.

[RestorationHardware's Pavilionstripe Thai silk pillow covers .]
RestorationHardware Item: Pavilionstripe Thai silk pillow covers Price: $14 - $40 Comment: Silk taffeta covers in silver sage, flax, sangria and gold paired with ivory.
With these quarterly launches, the low-price Swedish retailer is joining a slew of rivals that have been pushing seasonal collections in recent years. William Sanoma Inc.'s Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel and others have been seeking to turn rarely replaced household staples such as curtains or rugs into fashion items that consumers regularly update.

Restoration Hardware Inc. has been aggressive in pushing collections of textiles, such as curtains and pillow covers, this year, increasing the number of items in this category 76%. Ikea's selection increase this year is expected to be a more-modest 10%.

Textiles have been a particularly successful area in the seasonal marketing of home goods. Bed and bath linens are simple to replace compared with, say, a sofa or armoire.

And "textiles are a higher-margin business" than furniture, says Neely Tamminga, senior analyst at Piper Jaffray Co. in Minneapolis. "These retailers are just following the money."

Home textiles were a $19.4 billion industry in 2003, the most recent year for which numbers are available, according to industry publication HFN.

Ikea spokeswoman Wendy Clark says the company decided to move to quarterly textile collections after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its 2002 Consumer Expenditure Survey that 15% of Americans bought bedroom and bathroom linens every quarter.

[IKEA's Malou bedding, bath towel and mat.]
IKEA Item: Malou bedding, bath towel and mat Price: $9.99 for towel and bathmat; $39.99 for twin quilt cover with pillow sham Comment: Bedding is in cotton satin; bath towel and mat both come in blue or brown.
American spending on household textiles increased 54% from 1997 to 2002, according to the bureau's report. During that same time period, spending on household textiles as gifts surged 57%, representing the largest increase in any of the surveyed consumer categories, many of which saw decreases during that period.

At Ikea, Ms. Clark says sales of bed and bath textiles alone rose 12% last year and are expected to increase at a faster pace this year. So this week Ikea introduces its first spring collection -- $8.99 curtains with aqua patterns, $3.99 taupe-and-white pillow shams and $9.99 tie-dye-style bath mats. Each of its four launches this year will feature 30 to 60 new items.

"It's an easy change you can make," Ms. Clark says. "You can completely change the look of a room without making a big investment."

At Restoration Hardware, which offers splashy launches of textiles twice a year, plus seasonal and holiday goods such as beach towels and Christmas-tree skirts, spokesman Dave Glassman says the retailer is unruffled by Ikea's move. "Ikea carries many of the same categories that Restoration Hardware carries," he says, "but the products are very different."

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