Mar 1, 2017
Association for Creative Industries reveals size of US creative products opportunity

The Association For Creative Industries (AFCI), formerly the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA), announced key findings from its long-awaited 2016 Creative Products Size of the Industry Study, revealing the U.S. creative products industries are valued at $43 billion. AFCI partnered with MaritzCX to survey U.S. households about their participation in and spending on creative activities. The results also uncover the top crafts by participation, crafters’ demographic profiles, and attitudes toward creative activities.

“As a trusted partner of AFCI, we were happy to tap our deep bench of expertise in the research and craft and hobby industry to conduct a survey of more than 6,000 U.S. consumers to help determine the overall size and behavior of the market,” said Mary Barnidge, client success director for MaritzCX. “We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the market size exceeded our expectations.”

The crafts with the highest level of household participation in the past 12 months are:

Painting and drawing (41.0 million)
Edible arts (39.7 million)
Kids crafts (37.0 million)
Paper crafts (36.5 million)
Sewing and fabric (32.2 million)

Other key findings include:

63% of U.S. households participated in at least one creative activity in the past 12 months
65.5 million households indicated they participated in a creative activity in the past month
60% females / 40% males make up the overall participation in most crafts

“The data is very compelling,” says Mark Hill, Chief Executive Officer and President, AFCI. “We believe in Maritz’s methodology, and are eager to continue this research on an ongoing basis to see how it evolves over time. Research is an invaluable tool for our members offering them current insights about their customers, which helps them make critical investments and decisions to grow.”

The findings comprise voluntary responses of 6,209 U.S. adults ages 18 and older collected between October 2015 and September 2016.