NAICS 414330Canadian industry · 6-digitnational market

Linen, drapery and other textile furnishings merchant wholesalers

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling household linens, draperies and other textile home furnishings. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 182
Under 10 employeesA: 82%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–410155%

5–94826%

10–191810%

20–49105%

50–9953%

100–1990—

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 182 Canadian establishments with employees, 82% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario9049%

Quebec4927%

British Columbia3016%

Alberta105%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020

82.8%

1 year

64.3%

3 years

51.2%

5 years

34.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 414, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 414 Personal and household goods merchant wholesalers

The distributor's margin is squeezed from both sides as brands sell direct. Exclusive lines are the defensible position.

Who sets the price: Brands above, retailers below; the wholesaler holds neither.
The software it runs on: Distribution ERP, EDI and marketplace integrations.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4143 Home furnishings merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4143

Home Furnishings Importer-DistributorExecution decides

binding constraint: defensibility

Furniture, flooring, housewares and linens are sourced from overseas factories and sold to Canadian retailers by some 1,291 wholesalers, 70% of them under ten people. The group looks comfortable on average: a 35.0% gross margin and 7.3% operating profit on $10.0B of revenue in 2024 [A]. Entry is a container, a showroom and a sales trip. The cut is that an importer owns neither the factory nor the customer, and the larger the customer, the faster it notices. A mass retailer or online marketplace that sells enough of an item sends its own buyers to the same factory. Dorel's Home segment is the Canadian case at scale: a Montreal-based seller of ready-to-assemble and imported furniture to mass merchants and e-commerce, it reported 2025 revenue of US$309.4M, down 40.1% from US$516.2M, and an operating loss of US$93.9M after a US$95.3M loss the year before, and is exiting warehouses and plants in Ontario, Quebec and California [A]. Dorel had decades of relationships and lost the position anyway. The group total tells the same story more quietly: revenue peaked at $10.8B in 2022 and has not recovered [A]. What survives are wholesalers with something a retailer cannot replicate — a mill's exclusive territory in floor coverings, a designed and protected line, or a service to independent stores too small to import for themselves. The screen does not claim those niches fail; it claims the generic importer has no moat, and that a full study should start with floor covering distribution, which was not examined here.

NAICS 41434 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Distribution ERP, EDI and marketplace integrations.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 82% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →