I-Style in the US: January-March 2005 statistics

Ice has published (based on data from the American Department of Trade) the first quarter 2005 results for exports in some I-Style sectors, home/furnishings and fashion, to the US.

In the first three months of 2005, the Italian 'home/furnishings' sector (furniture, marble, tiles, faucets, lighting, fixtures, household linen) exported to the United States a total just below 700 million dollars, an increase of little more than one percentage point compared to the same period 2004. The sector's substantial stability on exports, however, is not the same for all segments: excellent results for lighting articles (+11.22%), fixtures (+38.47%), ceramic tiles (+10.35%) and marble (+10.80%), faucets are stable, household linen is just short, but the trend in the furniture segment is extremely negative and recorded a downturn of almost 10 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2004.

The 'fashion' sector (clothing, footwear, cosmetics/perfumes, yarns/fabrics, jewelry/gold, eyewear, furs, leatherwear) has already exported around 1.5 billion dollars worth to the US during the first quarter of 2005.
In this sector, there is still a significant falloff in the gold/jewelry segment which dropped by around 14% compared to the same period in 2003; a negative first quarter also for furs and leatherwear (-6.27%) and footwear (-2.32%).
Clothing and yarns/fabrics are stable with signs of a possible recovery.A positive two-figure quarter for cosmetics and perfumes exports (+29.92%), eyewear (+13.23%) and leatherwear (+11.46%).The Italian cosmetics/perfumes and eyewear sectors specifically are the most dynamic also in the first quarter of 2005, as they were for the whole of 2004; these sectors are the driving force behind the whole of I-Style in the US.

For Italian eyewear, the result was again more than significant in what has always been the first reference market for the sector's exports.