Last week there was a little flurry of profit warnings from UK companies involved in retailing carpets, though it is only fair to add that gloom was not universal.

The stock market, as is its wont, mercilessly slashed the share prices of those feeling anxious.

Cruel stuff, though it has been possible for a while to argue that some quoted carpet retailers were a bit optimistically priced in the stock market. Rising profits were seen as likely to continue indefinitely through much-publicised new outlets. Proprietors' families (wisely, as it turns out) extracted tens of millions from their companies during the boom times, when the many television adverts made you think that all of us were constantly buying discounted carpets and furniture.

But gravy trains don't go on forever in textiles, even among go-go UK retailers, and even when they can import their wares cheaply from abroad if the currency pendulum makes it advantageous.

When they issue profit warnings, therefore, it does rather look as though demand from the consumer might have tailed off.

One thing is certain. It isn't the high price of wool that has made things difficult.

Crossbred wool for carpets and suchlike didn't even manage to share in the very minor upturn which the Australian merino market experienced a month or so ago.

The NZ market indicators have only just managed to creep up a few cents in the past couple of weeks, as a depressing wool selling season staggers towards its close.

So that if the demand side has really taken a turn for the worse, after its relatively satisfactory spell at the UK retail end, and if prospects around the world are not exactly buoyant, it does become a bit difficult to foresee a crossbred wool boom around the corner. Oh dear.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.