Gaziantep Courts France and Italy as Imports Fall

The numbers

• $4,297 — Drewry's World Container Index per 40-foot container in the week of Aug. 6, up 1% after three weeks of declines (Home Accents Today)
• 45% — how far polypropylene resin into Turkey sits above its pre-war level — the cost floor under every tufted and woven program (FurniPulse Materials tracker)
• $714.3M — Türkiye's rugs and carpets into the US in the twelve months to 2026-03-01, second only to India — the base against which a push into France and Italy has to be read (FurniPulse analysis of U.S. Census International Trade API data)
• -11.2% — the fall in total US rug and carpet imports over the same twelve months, which is why winning share there is not the same as growth (FurniPulse analysis of U.S. Census International Trade API data)
• 83,887 — visitors to DOMOTEX asia/CHINAFLOOR in Shanghai, from 146 countries — floor traffic is still there where the format works (MENA Covering)

The most useful thing to know about the ten weeks since early August — we were off, and this is the catch-up — is that the part of the trade's cost base we can still see has not come back down. In the week of Aug. 6, Drewry's World Container Index rose 1% to $4,297 per 40-foot container, reversing three straight weeks of decline, with Shanghai–New York spot at $7,893 and Shanghai–Los Angeles at $5,894, as Home Accents Today reported — the last freight read in front of us. Several carriers had begun adding emergency fuel surcharges in August, and the Strait of Hormuz — which before the conflict carried about one-fifth of the world's oil and gas supply — had been effectively closed since the war began in February and was still closed when that report was filed on Aug. 7. Materials we can date to Oct. 12 tell the same story: polypropylene resin into Turkey runs 45% above its pre-war level and polyester chips, on a China domestic basis, run 41% above theirs (FurniPulse Materials tracker). Meanwhile every US import category FurniPulse tracks was smaller over the twelve months to 2026-03-01 than in the twelve before it. Two facts, one conclusion: anyone making a sourcing or selling decision this autumn is working against a higher floor and a smaller pipe, and the most interesting moves of the period came from companies that accepted both rather than waiting for either to revert.

Gaziantep stops waiting for the American buyer

The clearest of those moves came from Türkiye. Leading Gaziantep carpet manufacturers are targeting Paris and Milan as part of a sectoral trade delegation aimed at increasing Türkiye's carpet exports to France and Italy, as MENA Covering reported. On its face that is a routine export-promotion trip. Read against the trade data it is something sharper.

Türkiye is already the second-largest supplier of rugs and carpets into the United States, at $714.3M in the twelve months to 2026-03-01, up 23.4%, behind India's $1.1B, up 37.1% — in a category that was down 11.2% overall, to $3.1B (FurniPulse analysis of U.S. Census International Trade API data). So Gaziantep is not running from a market where it is losing. It is adding destinations to a market where it is taking share of a shrinking total. That is a better reason to get on a plane than the usual ribbon-cutting.

Our read: this is the right trade for anyone with rug or textile capacity and a US-weighted order book. The number that matters to a Gaziantep mill is not its own growth rate but the category total, and that is falling. France and Italy are far shorter hauls from Turkish ports than the US lanes, so on our read the freight exposure in a ninety-day quote is smaller — we have no Turkey–Europe rate in front of us to size it. The two rug stories we saw this period — the London Design Festival and a Brooklyn showhouse — both sat in the design and specification channel rather than promotional retail, which we come back to below.

For US importers the second-order effect is worth pricing in now. Our expectation, not something the delegation has announced: if Turkish mills win real volume in Paris and Milan, capacity US buyers have treated as freely available at this year's prices starts getting allocated, and allocation is how lead times lengthen before anybody announces an increase. We would be asking Turkish suppliers what they have committed to European accounts for next year's programs before signing an annual deal, and we would want the answer in writing.

The cost floor that didn't come back down

The early-August freight picture was not a spike so much as a refusal to normalize. Drewry put the increase mainly on trans-Pacific lanes, with carriers landing general rate increases as volumes held firm into August and congestion at central and southern Chinese ports constraining available capacity; eight blank sailings were scheduled on the trans-Pacific for the following week, unchanged from the week of Aug. 6. Asia–Europe moved the other way, with Shanghai–Genoa down 2% to $5,506 and Shanghai–Rotterdam flat at $4,653 — the shape you would expect when Asian export pressure is aimed at America while carrier capacity management holds Europe steady. Drewry said it expected volatility to ease in the following week.

The geopolitics underneath all of it remained reported risk rather than resolution, and we are careful to leave it there. Iran said it was close to finalizing an agreement with Oman over reopening the strait, under proposals in which Tehran would control ships entering the Gulf and Oman would oversee outbound traffic; Iranian sources told Reuters that important details were unsettled and pushed back on President Donald Trump's claim that an agreement was imminent. Iran has also said reopening would depend on the United States lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, and that any new arrangement would not simply restore the prewar status quo. Shipping data cited by The Guardian showed traffic through both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb falling sharply day on day, and the Houthis said they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers as part of their maritime blockade. That is the reporting as of early August; it is not a forecast, and we have no later read on the strait.

Set against it, the US demand side was already past its high point. This year's peak shipping season was winding down, with import volume at major US container ports expected to remain high in August before starting to fall, as Textile World reported from the National Retail Federation; the excerpt we have stops there. That is a US-only data point, and it is the awkward one. When volume comes down and rates do not, landed cost per unit rises for everyone shipping less than a full program, which describes most mid-size importers.

The import ledger shows how little room there is to absorb that. Furniture and casegoods into the US came to $22.5B in the twelve months to 2026-03-01, down 9.1%; mattresses and bedding $3.2B, down 23.2%; home textiles $8.1B, down 17.1% (FurniPulse analysis of U.S. Census International Trade API data). Those twelve months end in March, so they are backdrop, not a report on this period. But a double-digit fall across most of what we track is not a market that passes a cost increase through to the consumer without losing units, and that is the constraint every program negotiated between now and spring has to clear.

Rugs sell in rooms, mattresses sell in stores

The demand-side stories of the period all pointed the same way: the selling that still works has moved closer to the specifier and to the salesfloor. At the 2026 Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse the rugs on show came from Momeni, Rug & Kilim and Atelier Fevrier, as Cover Magazine reported; during the London Design Festival the same magazine's rug highlights centered on Design Focus/26 at Centre Chelsea Harbour and beyond. Our read, not something the coverage measures: these are specification channels, where a rug is chosen for a room rather than shopped on price.

At Las Vegas Market, bedding manufacturers were talking less about introducing the next must-have mattress and more about helping retailers improve store performance, with consumer demand still uneven, as Home Textiles Today reported. Put that beside mattresses and bedding down 23.2%: our read is that the vendors at that one market have stopped expecting product news to fix a demand problem. That is the more honest response, and the harder one to budget.

The traffic is also still there when the format earns it. The 28th DOMOTEX asia/CHINAFLOOR, held 27–29 May in Shanghai and reported in August, drew 83,887 visitors from 146 countries, as MENA Covering reported. A show that size is not a market in retreat; it is a market shopping harder.

Our read: in a contracting market the channel that holds price is the one with a person doing the specifying — a designer, a showroom, a fair stand. So if you are weighing a showroom or trade-fair budget against landed cost, you are optimizing the half you do not control — freight and resin are not your lines. The through-line of these ten weeks is that materials costs stood 45% (polypropylene) and 41% (polyester chips) above pre-war levels when we last read them on Oct. 12, US import volumes in the twelve months to March were smaller than in the twelve before them with nothing in front of us for the summer, and the operators worth copying answered by changing where they sell and who does the selling.

What we know, and what we don't

Established: freight reversed three weeks of declines in the week of Aug. 6 and carriers added fuel surcharges from August; the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since February, with reopening talks progressing but unresolved as of early August; resin and polyester chips sit well above pre-war levels; and every US import category we track shrank over the twelve months to 2026-03-01. Still open: where rates and the strait actually stand now, since this pack's last freight read is from Aug. 7 and we will not extrapolate ten weeks from it; whether the Gaziantep delegation converts into French and Italian orders or stays a goodwill trip; whether the import declines that ended in March continued through the summer; and how far the National Retail Federation expects US port volumes to fall, which the excerpt we have does not say. High Point Market Fall is the first place US buyers will show whether they are writing orders against this cost base or holding out.

On the calendar

• 2026-10-14 — EXPO CIHAC, Mexico City (to 2026-10-17)
• 2026-10-16 — DESIGNART TOKYO, Tokyo (to 2026-10-25)
• 2026-10-24 — High Point Market Fall, High Point, USA (to 2026-10-28)

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FurniPulse analysis based on the reporting, filings and FurniPulse data cited above. It is not investment, legal or customs advice. Spot an error? Email contact@furnipulse.com — we correct openly.