Article Summary
Fast homewares have become the new fast fashion, with supermarkets and discount sellers witnessing the strongest growth in the UK homeware market. This shift towards affordable, on-trend homeware has its roots in the post-war period and has been accelerated by the expansion of brands like Ikea and Urban Outfitters. However, this trend has a significant environmental impact, with 70 million homeware items thrown away each year in the UK alone. As the industry faces growing pressure to become more sustainable, some consumers are embracing a “less is more” philosophy and turning to local producers and upcycling.
What This Means for You
- Be mindful of the environmental impact of fast homewares and consider purchasing from local producers or upcycling existing items.
- Look for retailers who are taking steps to be more transparent about their supply chains and lessen their environmental impact.
- Consider the value of items beyond their initial cost and think about the story behind them, including where they were made and who made them.
- Be aware of the potential for greenwashing and stay informed about industry practices to make informed decisions.
Original Post
Walk into any big UK supermarket, and somewhere between the pasta and pet food you’ll find an aisle stacked with seductively stylish yet affordable homeware. From tableware to throws, cushions to coasters, objets d’art to duvet covers, the shelves will be teeming with everything you could possibly need to furnish your home – all in the latest shades and styles, and most costing less than the price of a takeaway.
Just a few years ago, this would have seemed strange, but with Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco all launching own-brand homeware ranges in the past decade, and the expansion of Lidl and Aldi, both known for their “middle aisle” bargains, purchasing homewares during the weekly shop has become the new normal.
“If there were bits and bobs that could be bought, I would buy them,” admits Scottish former cheap homeware addict Carol Murdoch, 42. “You’d go shopping for a loaf of bread and come home with a candle.
“It took doing my master’s in sustainability for me to actually look at it, and go: ‘We’re being completely conned here,’” says the former teacher, and director at an outdoor learning company. “As much as I now go, ‘Blooming heck!’, I did it – I bought homeware, all the time, without giving it a second thought.”
In recent years, fast fashion has faced a reckoning – in part due to the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, in which 1,134 people were killed and at least another 2,000 injured when a factory collapsed in Bangladesh. The garment workers inside – who operated in sweatshop conditions, earning less than $2 (£1.60) a day – made clothes for big name high street retailers, including Primark and Matalan. Since then, a slew of initiatives – from sustainable fashion week to Second Hand September – have changed how many of us buy and think about clothes.
Yet, at the same time, the ever-growing fast homeware industry has slipped under the radar. According to market and consumer data provider Statista, the UK homeware market has “expanded substantially” in the past decade. Business intelligence platform GlobalData estimates the industry was worth £14.32bn in 2023, with discount sellers witnessing the strongest growth, and key retailers including Dunelm, B&M, Ikea, The Range, Amazon and John Lewis.
The homeware market began to speed up in the years after the second world war, when brands such as Ercol – whose original designs are now highly sought-after as vintage pieces – began mass-producing modern, affordable furniture. By the 1970s, Ikea was expanding worldwide, opening its first UK store in 1987. Throughout the 1990s, production continued to grow. When Urban Outfitters arrived in the UK in 1998, it changed the game again; highly curated, trend-led homewares and gifts mingled with shoes and clothes. It was selling a lifestyle, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the high street caught on.
Zara Home was launched in 2003. It may have been the first fast fashion chain to add a dedicated homewares line, but it was far from the last. In 2009, H&M Home entered the market, and by the 2020s Primark and hyper-fast online brands such as Boohoo, Pretty Little Things and Shein had followed suit.
The similarities between the fashion and homewares industries is no coincidence. Interior designer Helen Gordon – who has since co-founded regenerative interior design and build studio Nested Living, and sits on the British Institute of Interior Design’s sustainability committee – witnessed this first-hand as a retail buyer for high street homewares brands in the early 2000s.
“It was very much about looking and understanding what fashion did, to make it the same,” she says. Although Gordon loved her job as a buyer, she grew increasingly uncomfortable with the hidden human cost.
“You’re going to China, and in the factories you’re seeing people who only see their families for two weeks a year, when it’s Chinese new year, and they’re in a dormitory, lights go out at 9 o’clock, there’s no electricity after that. That’s their life,” she says. “It’s all ethical, quality standard, big companies I was working with, but it really hits you when you go there and you see it.”
Six years into her career, Gordon’s misgivings about the high street’s business practices crystalised when the company she was working for went bust, with shocking consequences.
“Suppliers were left with already made stock and substantial unpaid invoices. There was always a clear power dynamic, with us as the retailer often in the driving seat, but this imbalance became particularly evident during this difficult time,” she says. “Not long after we went into administration, one of our suppliers in the far east tragically took his own life. As the primary liaison, I felt a deep sense of responsibility; they’re our friends, our suppliers. I couldn’t help but reflect on whether the pressures of working with us had contributed to his situation. From that point on, I just thought: ‘I can’t keep doing this.’ I realised this just wasn’t a sustainable way of working for me.”
It’s not just foreign workers who are being exploited. In 2018, Bristol-based ceramicist Sarah Wilton discovered that Urban Outfitters were selling factory-made pieces apparently copied from her handcrafted designs. Her pieces were part of an exclusive range of 100 hand-thrown plant pots and ornamental vases that she had created for the luxury London department store Liberty.
“The collection was unapologetically handmade,” Wilton says. “The motifs were inspired by music and melody, and the forms fused a combination of inspirations from mid-century British ceramic design, Oriental ornamentalism and art nouveau colour palettes.”
While each of Wilton’s pieces was unique and retailed for £55 to £100; Urban Outfitters batch-made copies were on sale for £15 to £30.
“It crushed me,” says the 36-year-old. “I was working so hard, juggling jobs, serious graft. I had a newfound confidence in the stuff I was making, I had been picked up by Liberty and featured in American Vogue. But then, very swiftly, it was followed by the Urban Outfitters incident. I felt totally robbed.”
With the help of friends and mentors, Wilton sought legal advice and created a storm on social media. In response, Urban Outfitters issued a statement, saying: “We take intellectual property very seriously, both in protecting what has been developed by our own artists and designers, and also respecting the intellectual property and designs of others. Out of deference to the artist Sarah Wilton, we have removed the vase in question from stock.”
However, Wilton says the situation was never fully resolved to her liking: “I had some evidence of units sold, but received no receipt of units made, and no receipt of the destruction of remaining items. They did, in fact, continue to sell them after the initial dispute was resolved – followers shared this with me and I had to repeat the process. They may well have sold remaining units to other wholesalers, as this is fairly common practice and has happened to artists and makers I know.”
Unfortunately for independent makers such as Wilton, high-end looks for low prices is exactly the appeal for many shoppers.
Key Terms
- Fast homewares
- Sustainable homewares
- Affordable homewares
- High street homewares
- Mass-produced homewares
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