September sales for furniture and home furnishings retailers increased 2.7% from the same month last year and were up 1% from August, the U.S. Department of Commerce said.

Sales for the sector grew to $9.089 billion in September according to advanced estimates by the government, up from a revised $8.847 billion in September 2015.

Total U.S. retail and food services sales also increased 2.7% from September a year ago to $459. 8 billion, and were up 0.6% from August, according to the report.

As was the case in August, the strongest sector was non-store retailers — primarily e-commerce and catalog businesses — with sales up10.6% in September over the same month in 2015. Non-store retail sales were up 0.3% over August sales. Food and beverage places saw the next best September-over-September gain, up 6.1% followed by building material and garden supply stores and miscellaneous store retailers, each up 5.6%.

The biggest loser was the department store sub-category of general merchandise store, which saw sales decline 6.4% from September 2015. Sales at appliance and electronics stores were down 3.8% from the previous September.

(Source: furnituretoday.com  Author: Clint Engel)