They say most industries are a zero-sum game where the winners balance out the losers. That was hardly the case for the home furnishings retail business this past year, when the number of distressed, downtrodden and downright defunct companies far outnumbered those that did well.

As discussed last week, the losers included Big Lots, Conn’s, Badcock, LL Flooring, Pirch and American Freight—just to name a few. They either barely survived 2024 … or didn’t. But there is a flip side to this retail coin; in fact, a fair number of sellers of home furnishings products had decent or even better-than-decent years. It still doesn’t quite balance things out, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that there were good companies that overcame bad business in 2024.

So, as Part 2 of our Retail Winners & Losers year-end wrap-up, let’s look at the good news for a change.

Big-Boxers
While we tend to think of home furnishings retailers as specialists, the biggest winners this past year are the broader, general-merchandise brands that just happen to sell home goods in addition to everything else they carry. Put Walmart at the top of this list, as it generally outperformed its closest competitor, Target, and also most of the rest of the retail world. Close behind—neck and neck is more like it—is Costco, which has had a simply stellar year, specifically citing home as one of its better performers. And then there’s the TJX family, including HomeGoods but also T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and TJX’s newest brand, Homesense. They all put up terrific numbers and continued to take market share from the rest of the home sector. That will only increase as Homesense continues to build out its store base.

Restoring RH
Had the calendar ended three months earlier, RH might have ended up on the other side of this ledger. But its final quarter of 2024 showed a remarkable resurgence, and if you believe the theory that it is a leading indicator in the sector, that’s good news for the rest of furniture and home retailing. We’d want to see some more sustainability in its financial performance and much more black ink—but RH’s latest numbers are a good omen for next year.

Williams-Sonoma Cooking Up
The furniture and home decor business at Williams-Sonoma is still not where its management would want it to be, but this was offset by continued strength in its namesake housewares nameplate and its giftable assortments. It showed some encouraging improvement in its Pottery Barn and West Elm brands, even if their performances are still nothing to write home about.

The Wayfair Way
Clear profitability still eludes the online giant, but they have been making progress on that front—to say nothing of, at long last, opening their first true store. Again, there’s more work to be done here, but Wayfair certainly fell into the positive side of things this past year.

Isn’t That Special?
The rest of the public home specialty chains—Ethan Allen, Havertys, Arhaus, La-Z-Boy, Bassett, et al.—didn’t do great … but they generally did a little less terribly than the year before. If this sounds like a backhanded compliment, that’s because it is. Lots of furniture-focused stores went bankrupt, so the fact that these companies endured and seem poised to take advantage of a recovery has to be encouraging.

Yeah, we know, some of these retailers weren’t big winners this past year, but anybody who wasn’t a loser in these times deserves serious credit. Zero-sum? Not in furniture and home in 2024.

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Warren Shoulberg is the former editor in chief for several leading B2B publications. He has been a guest lecturer at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business; received honors from the International Furnishings and Design Association and the Fashion Institute of Technology; and been cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other media as a leading industry expert. His Retail Watch columns offer deep industry insights on major markets and product categories.