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UK Carpet manufacturing industry - overview - Coggle Diagram
- UK Carpet manufacturing industry - overview
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Sector info
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approx. 100 UK carpet manufacturers, mostly small-mid sized unquoted businesses, focussing on higher quality carpets (WWL is one).
Largest UK manufacturer: AIM listed Victoria plc, international flooring conglomerate
Overseas competition from imported carpets from the EU, tends to focus on lower price segments of UK market
Key segments:
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Commercial carpets
Establishments eg shops, offices, hotels
more specialist eg coaches, cruise ships
Specific customer requirements eg hard wearing, resistant to stains/dirt
UK demand
Residential segment
Traditionally, reasonably assured repeat sales as most UK homes have carpets and they do wear out and need replacing
Additional growth from house buying:
- moving into new home & replace carpets (although around 12 months delay)
- demand also driven by pressure to build new home
- links to the property market
- estimated average growth rate of 2% each year
Decision to buy:
- based on look and feel
- also sometimes a higher price can be seen to indicate quality
Carpet = 60% of all floor covering sales. Hard coverings eg wood and laminate have always been popular for high traffic areas and kitchen / bathrooms. But becoming more popular due to:
- More efficient home heating
- Preferred austere aesthetic
- combined with rugs (which WWL already sells)
Commercial segment
Demand driven by broader considerations:
- insulation
- acoustics
- resistance to wear and tear
- lease length
- fire resistance
- budget
- sustainability
Carpet retailing:
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Carpet retailing has a skewed structure:
- small # of large national chains (eg Carpetright) dominate
- these + large home furnishing = 50% of market share in carpet retail
- Other 50% is very fragmented (2,000 small retailers)
- competitive as range of outlet choices for manufactures
- Therefore very few manufacturers operate their own retail outfit.
Becuase large retailers dominate, smaller retailers can join to form buying groups. WWL does not currently sell to any buying groups but it is considering.
Lead times: for both segments short lead time is important. Delivery required ASAP and on a specific date. Getting a carpet fitted is disruptive for customers and delivery much also coincide with the fitter and removal of old carpet ideally.
Overview
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Primary materials:
- wool,
- cotton,
- synthetic fibres
Related items:
- underlay
- other soft floor products
- some firms produce hard floor coverings eg wood, tiles
Sustainability
- Traditionally, carpets have been built to be durable.
- Difficult to break down into raw materials
- Therefore recycling is time consuming and expensive.
- So most end of life carpets are disposed
in landfill or incinerated.
- Increasing calls for manufacturing industry to become more sustainable.
- Mainly this means circular economy
- Where the output of a manufacturing process can be re-used or recycled into another product
