Pam Danziger of The Robin Report tells her readers that leading luxury home furnishings and furniture retailers are already feeling the pinch. She writes:
The U.S. luxury market is rapidly falling into a recession (if it isn’t already there), according to Chandler Mount, founder of the Affluent Consumer Research Company. His firm’s latest survey of affluent luxury consumers (average income, about $400k) finds their financial confidence has dropped from an index of 64.2 points in June, the highest it’s been all year, to 55.6 points in October, its lowest. And the index measuring future luxury spending has declined from 58.3 points in June to 49.7 points.
While an RH Gallery might be a destination for a drink in a beautiful environment when you step away to browse the furniture showrooms, your mood could turn from celebratory to shock after seeing the price tags.
Downward Spiral
Across the 22 luxury goods and services/experiential categories included in the survey, all show a downward shift in purchase incidence over the last three months, with home-related purchases particularly hard hit. Luxury real estate dropped from 20 percent earlier in the year to nine percent most recently and luxury brand furniture/home decor declined from 28 percent to 14 percent.
The leading luxury home furnishings and furniture retailers are already feeling the pinch. But one company stands above, Arhaus. […]
In other words, Arhaus delivers maximum value for the price, which is a winning formula for any brand, even in the luxury sphere. It resists grandiose ideas, like RH’s Friedman that are too easily tripped up in execution. Arhaus might be called “RH-Lite,” but that would not tell the whole story. As long as Reed and team stick to their knitting and the company’s proven formula, Arhaus is likely to remain ahead of its competitive set in performance, especially as the luxury home furnishings market continues to head south.
Read more here.