Product and Service
Companies included in leather &craft retailer sector in personal items industry primarily sell, by their own stores and online, leather and leather craft items.
Demand for Product and Service
As indicated by typical sales data, the demand for leather craft products of companies in this sector seems to be very weak and continuingly declining in the past several years due to unfavourable retail environment.
The Sector
Sector’s Current, Trend, Causes behind trend, and Future
Current and Trend
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The demand for leather and leather craft products in US market seems to have been weak in the past three years as indicated by the continuingly declining same store sales of those typical companies in this sector.
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The retail performance in those companies’ own stores seems to be better than in store of wholesale customers of those companies, a fact that may means that demand is still strong enough to be sensitive to promotions.
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As a response to the soft same store sales/traffic, we have seen accelerating expansion of new stores from some of typical companies. However, those strategies seem to have been hurting profitability of those companies due to the whole unfavourable environment in the industry.
Causes behind the trend
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Decline in wholesale sales should be attributable directly to less stores visits of their wholesale customers.
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Improved retail sales in their owned store may be due to the larger flexibility of those stores, in pricing, than their wholesale customers, with ability to control product supplies.
Industry Future
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We will probably be seeing continuingly weak performance of companies in this industry as traffic continues to go somewhere else other than those mall-based stores.