According to a recent industry report, radiant heating sales in 2019 were led by both electric floor heating mats and heating cables.

WarmlyYours, a manufacturer specializing in radiant heating products like electric floor warming systems, released its 2019 Q4 & Annual Industry Report. This report analyzes the sales of radiant heating products within the wider context of the national housing and remodeling markets. One of the primary conclusions drawn in the report was that sales of WarmlyYours radiant floor heating products were led by growth in TempZone Easy Mats.

According to the report, sales of TempZone Easy Mats were up 15.8% in the fourth quarter of the year and up 10.3% for the year as a whole. This product line features pre-sized fiberglass mats which have an electric heating cable attached to them. Compared to heating cables or rolls, the mat product is easy to install because it’s simply adhered to the subfloor prior to being embedded in thinset or self-leveling cement.

The report identified several causes for this growth including their popularity via ecommerce channels like Amazon and their use in some of the most commonly heated projects (tile bathrooms) where they’re used in a method of radiant heating called “spot heating,” where heating elements are only placed under high-traffic areas of the floor. This helps cut down on both material costs and operational costs.

WarmlyYours sales performance

In the last quarter of the fiscal year, WarmlyYours saw consolidated sales grow 9%, compared to prior-year-period. This last push helped propel sales for all of 2019 into positive growth as consolidated sales were up 1.6%. The fourth quarter increase was driven by 8.1% growth in the US and 14.8% sales growth in Canada.

A lot of this was from a 5% uptick in floor heating sales. However, sales of electric snow melting systems contributed the largest volume increase by posting an impressive growth of 74.4% in Q4 2019. This year was unique because the fourth quarter was by far and away the largest for snow melting sales (historically, Q3 is the strongest quarter for snow melting sales volume). Between Q3 and Q4 of 2019, WarmlyYours saw snow melting sales increase by 20.7%.

Interestingly, this has driven snow melting to constitute a much more significant proportion of WarmlyYours total sales in 2019 than in 2018. Snow melting now accounts for 23% of all sales in 2019, whereas it only made up 14% in 2018.

Snow melting sales via Amazon also had a strong Q4 (up nearly 268%) and a strong 2019 as a whole (up nearly 254%).

Total WarmlyYours Amazon sales grew 6.2% ended up constituting 17% of all WarmlyYours sales in 2019. In the same time period, sales via the “trade” channel (including a variety of different professionals from paving contractors to electricians to flooring installers) were up 5.9% and made up 39% of all WarmlyYours sales.