Furniture retailers — NAICS 44911 industry report

01

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

1–41,08833%

5–997530%

10–1968121%

20–4939412%

50–99853%

100–199130%

200–499140%

500+30%

Of 3,253 Canadian establishments with employees, 63% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario1,29540%

Quebec66921%

British Columbia51416%

Alberta34010%

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

Retail Trade, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

72.3%

3 years

59.8%

5 years

44.2%

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.

02

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 449, 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.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 449 Furniture, home furnishings, electronics and appliances retailers

Showroom retail against online price matching. Buying groups and delivery and installation service are what keep independents alive.

Who sets the price: Online and big-box price transparency.
The software it runs on: Retail point of sale, delivery and special-order management.

03

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 4491 Furniture, floor covering, window treatment and other home furnishings retailers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4491

Furniture & Mattress ShowroomOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

The pre-screen called furniture retail 'structurally squeezed'. The filings say otherwise, and that is the problem. Leon's Furniture — Leon's, The Brick and 300 stores — reported 2025 revenue of $2,573.7M, up 3.0%, same-store sales up 3.0%, furniture up 6.3%, and a gross margin of 45.04%, 65 basis points better than the year before, with net income of $157.0M [A]. In 2024 Fairfax took Sleep Country private at Cdn$35.00 a share, US$881M for the equity of a chain of more than 300 locations [A], a business the buyer describes as holding about 40% of the Canadian market [B]. Neither incumbent is in retreat. The existing 449 record argues the showroom has become a fitting room for an online sale; this record adds that the Canadian chains are profitable, growing in furniture and freshly capitalised — they are not the soft target that story implies. An entrant reaches a 45% gross margin only if it lands product at comparable cost, which means joining a buying group, and then carries the same fixed stack — showroom, warehouse, two-man delivery — across one store instead of three hundred. The incumbents also sell credit, warranties and insurance on top of the sofa, which a single store can only broker. Where Leon's itself is shrinking — mattresses and electronics, down mid-single digits [A] — is no opening either: that is the ground the specialist mattress chain and the online bedding brands already hold. Floor covering and window treatment retail (449121, 449122) is installation-led, closer to a trade than a shop, and was not examined here.

NAICS 44916 vendors named12 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 449 Furniture, home furnishings, electronics and appliances retailers

Independent Appliance & Furniture RetailOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

The showroom has become a fitting room for a purchase completed online, and the national chains and manufacturers price directly against the independent while carrying the delivery and warranty infrastructure a single store cannot. Inventory is bulky, financed and slow-turning. The defensible version is installation and service on appliances someone else sold — a trade business, not a retail one.

NAICS 4496 vendors named13 sourced figuresOpen →

04

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: Retail point of sale, delivery and special-order management.

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.

05

Who works here

The occupations employed in Retail 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 sales supervisors One industry 84.7%

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 80.1%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 80%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 69.7%

Pharmacists and dietitians Mostly one sector 61%

Medical technologists and technicians One industry 23.6%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 18.7%

Cooks, butchers and bakers Mostly one sector 15.7%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 12.2%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 11.2%

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

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 8.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.7%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 6.6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 6%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 5.7%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5.4%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 5.3%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

06

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 44911. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
449110	Furniture retailers	3,253	screened at 4491

Alongside it, under 4491 Furniture, floor covering, window treatment and other home furnishings retailers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
44912	Floor covering, window treatment and other home furnishing retailers	3,823	screened at 4491