SIC 3262 Vitreous China Table and Kitchen Articles

Contenidos

• NAICS CODE(S).
• FURTHER READING.

SIC 3262

This industry consists of companies that manufacture vitreous china table and kitchen articles, such as bone china, vitreous china tableware, vitreous china dishes, and china cooking ware. Manufacturers of fine earthenware table and kitchen articles are in SIC 3263: Fine Earthenware (Whiteware) Table and Kitchen Articles.

NAICS CODE(S)

327112

Vitreous China, Fine Earthenware and Other Pottery Product Manufacturing

The manufacture of vitreous china table and kitchen articles is an anomaly in early twenty-first-century America. It is a very labor-intensive industry, with skilled craftsmen perfecting work that has extremely high standards of quality. In this industry, much of the technology is the same as it was ages ago. Many glaze recipes, clays, molds, casting, and firing processes have remained unchanged, but potters' wheels are electric, and jiggerblades quickly shape the pieces.

Porcelain was being made in China as early as the ninth century. Many centuries later, the Ohio River valley became the first china-manufacturing center in the United States. Here manufacturers had easy access to kaolin, the soft, white clay that is essential to the manufacture of china and porcelain.

Vitreous china is made of clays that are glazed and fired at extremely high temperatures. The temperatures cause the glaze to fuse with the clay and become nonporous. This china is both delicate and extremely durable. For this reason, it is used in hotels and restaurants more often than the semivitreous earthenware manufactured in SIC 3263.

The industry is closely tied to economic conditions because many people consider china to be a luxury. Also, since the manufacturers sell to the hotel and restaurant trade, they suffer when there is a slump in new hotel and restaurant openings. The bridal market accounts for a large percentage of sales of bone china and other vitreous china table articles, and when this market suffers, so does the industry. Competition from abroad is intense. Imports account for about half of the U.S. market of housewares, kitchenware, and tableware. Some U.S. manufacturers have part of the work done overseas and finish their pieces in the United States.

As consumer confidence waned amidst the U.S. economic downturn that began in 2000, the industry declined. The value of industry shipments, which had dipped from $1.48 billion in 1997 to $1.44 billion in 1999, declined to a low point of $834...