Historical Industry Growth Data The U.S. Office Furniture Market The table and graphical representation below depict the concept of U.S. office furniture market consumption that is defined as production + imports - exports. Production is the total shipments, or sales, value of office furniture manufacturers located in the U.S. to all locations in the world. Consumption represents the value of all office furniture sold in the U.S. from all sources in the world, including those in the U.S. The chief office furniture trading partner with the U.S. is Canada, receiving about 52.2% of all U.S. office furniture exports. Until recently, Canada was also the largest importer of office furniture into the U.S. decreasing from about 62% in 2000 to around 28.6% today. China has increased its share to about 41.5%  from less than 13% in 2000. Please note,  2015 was the last year the data below was collected.  No additional information will be added to the charts. Annual U.S. Production by Product Category

IDC/ASID IMPACT Summit - BIFMA MEMBER DISCOUNT SPLC Summit - BIFMA MEMBER DISCOUNT interzum - BIFMA MEMBER DISCOUNT 2/17/2017 "EPA Recommended" Icon Announced By GSA 2/14/2017 New Office Chair Standard Approved 12/23/2016 BIFMA level® Program Recommended for Federal Purchasing 12/20/2016 OSHA Sustainability White Paper Released Today With BIFMA Input Membership Software Powered by YourMembership  ::  LegalPremium U.S. office furniture consumption from 1991 to 2015 (in million U.S. dollars) contentYear Consumption in million U.S. dollars - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - About This Statistic The statistic represents the value of office furniture demand in the U.S. between 1991 and 2015. In the United States, consumption of office furniture amounted to approximately 14.88 billion U.S. dollars in 2000. Special Functions Download startedThe office furniture business is an extremely useful economic

The ups and downs of this industry are not standalone indicators that you can use to time the market. They are, however, very good advance measures of overall economic health. After all, businesses only buy large amounts of office furniture—including the dreaded cubicle—when they are expanding their workforce and growing. That is why my bear market antenna started to twitch when I read the pessimistic outlooks of the largest office furniture and cubicle manufacturers in the world. If you’ve ever worked in a cubicle, the odds are good that it was made by Steelcase, which manufactures a wide selection of office Steelcase reported its quarterly results at the end of December. The company surprised Wall Street with a very pessimistic outlook, warning that the next two quarters would be worse than previously forecasted because of declining sales. Steelcase stock suffered a 20% haircut upon the news. “The thing that was most pronounced was… a decline in orders from

large customers and a decline in large projects,” Steelcase CEO “At the same time, order growth in the US furniture industry has slowed, as has overall US business capital spending. and pipeline at the end of the quarter showed fewer large projects than last year.” The industries that cut back the most were insurance, energy,big joe chair amazon information technology, and financial services.table and chairs harveys Herman Miller may be best known for its ultra-comfortable workwhere to buy a saucer chair chairs, but its specialty is selling bulk orders of cubicles toikea office chairs london the biggest corporations in America.cheap wheelchair in toronto

However, its bread-and-butter customers are cutting back. “I’d say if there is anything that you will hear out there, certainly the size of projects continues to be on mid-to-smallerThere [are] not as many very, very large things out there, at least that we can see,” said CEO Brian Walker. The drop in big orders resulted in a sales decline from Hermanbuy the invisible chair Miller’s largest sector, North America, for just the second time in the last 17 quarters. Moreover, 2015 per-share earnings of $1.82 are still lower than 2007 ($1.98) and 2008 ($2.56). HNI Corporation is another publicly traded office furniture maker, and its business has fallen off a cliff. Sales growth at its office division was chugging along at a+13.7% in Q1 and up +6.4$ in Q2. However, sales growth turned negative in Q3 and is projected to decline further by 3% to 7%.

No wonder that HNI’s stock recently hit a new 52-week low. (Remember, stocks that hit new 52-week lows almost always do so for very good reasons.) The Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) hears chatter from hundreds of its members. Wherever the sector is heading, it isn’t positive. a sharp decline in office furniture order growth—from 10% early in the year to 3% in the last couple months. And if the above warning signs are any indication, our economy is headed for a severe slowdown. So unless you want to put your portfolio through this hell, you better have a strategy to protect it when bad times come calling. That doesn’t mean you should rush out and sell all of your stocks tomorrow morning, but it does mean that you should crank down the volatility of your portfolio. Markets rise or fall each day, but when reporting the reasons, the financial media rarely provides investors with a complete