On Wall Street, they call it a bull market. It’s an environment characterized by confidence. Buyer demand is strong, and everybody who got in early seems pretty darned happy. They expect the surge to continue.

A bull market – that describes the casual furniture industry’s woven category.

Manufacturers heavily into the woven category report that 2014 sales generally were up 20 percent or more. More than one company acknowledged hitting annual sales targets months ahead of plan.

That’s impressive performance for a category that has been around for well over a decade. Woven has attained what industry execs call maturity; just about every major company – regardless of its core product line – has incorporated some aspect of woven into its products.

“When you go to the Casual Show, you would be hard-pressed not to find a woven product at some level in almost every outdoor furniture showroom,” says Tom Murray, president of NorthCape International.

“There is wicker at every level,” says Henry Vanderminden IV, president of Telescope Casual Furniture. “Everywhere a consumer can buy outdoor furniture, wicker is there.”

Telescope, best known these days for its aluminum and marine-grade plastic furniture, offers three woven collections. These make up 10 percent of the company’s 30 groups for 2015.

The market for woven vinyl furniture, Vanderminden says, is saturated. Randy Meek, president of Oxford Garden, agrees. “The category is very flooded at the moment,” he says.

Torbay chat from Oxford Garden.

Oxford Garden, which made its name with teak, offers a single woven collection called Torbay. The collection features teak accents, such as chair arms and tabletops. This blending of materials, often called mixed media, makes Torbay a natural extension of Oxford Garden’s core line.

“For me, it’s just another modular seating collection,” Meek says. “It’s been a good seller.”

But is the woven category saturated? Is the woven category flooded? Those terms imply that the market, like a sponge full of water, can absorb no more. That doesn’t seem to be the case.

Perhaps the market isn’t totally

saturated. Perhaps the woven tide is still rising, with even more room for sales growth.

The demand for deep seating, which allows infinite interpretations in woven furniture, shows no sign of let-up.

“Deep seating is driving the industry,” says Bew White, president of Summer Classics. (He notes that similar sales levels in woven dining furniture are “much more difficult to achieve.”)

Sales of fire pits – products that only make sense when surrounded by comfortable seating – continue to skyrocket. This further enhances confidence in woven’s future.

“If you put woven together with fire, that’s the most winning of combinations,” says Mark Bottemiller, National Sales manager for Ebel. The company’s sales were up “in the upper 20s” in 2014 after hitting 40 percent growth in 2013.

“Our early-buy has come in very strong,” Bottemiller says of the coming season. “I’m very pleased. I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t keep the train rolling.”

Lloyd Flanders had “a nice season” in 2014, says president Dudley Flanders. “Not gangbusters, but good.” The company introduced two new collections for 2015. Nova is a contemporary loom sectional, while Mackinac is an open weave collection. Sales of Mackinac, named for the famous Michigan resort, are running ahead of forecast, Flanders says.

Woodard saw sales of its woven products jump 25 percent in 2014. Creative director Bill Herren credits the hospitality industry with much of that increase. The contract market, he says, is strong for “real contemporary – very low, very sleek, and not that comfortable. It’s great for hospitality. They don’t want people lounging in their furniture for hours and hours.”

Preparations by some manufacturers to increase production capacity and enhance their ability to deliver product suggest that the woven category hasn’t fully ripened yet.

Patio Renaissance experienced sales growth “substantially more” than 20 percent in 2014, says Mark Gorr, vice president of Operations. The company is building a one million sq. ft. factory in Indonesia “that will give us the additional capacity to take on this growth spurt without missing a beat. We’re going to maintain our current factories in China,” he says.

La Vie wicker from Telescope Casual Furniture.

Woven furniture, he says, is “the fastest growing category in our industry right now. We’re anticipating 2015 to be even better.” The company is building a 40,000-sq. ft. warehouse facility in California to better serve customers in the western half of the United States. Patio Renaissance also has plans to expand its distribution facility in North Carolina.

NorthCape International, which in recent years has opened regional distribution facilities throughout the United States and eastern Canada, continues on that tack. “Expansion is part of the plan,” says Murray, the president, “and the West Coast will get the lion’s share of it.”

Sales of NorthCape products to specialty store customers were up about 20 percent in 2014, he says. Overall, the company’s sales were flat, which Murray attributed to disappointing sales at larger regional and national full-line furniture chains. The hard winter and late spring were responsible. “Early season sales didn’t happen,” he says.

Gloster NA built its reputation in teak, but the woven category currently makes up about 15 percent of its business, says president Eric Parsons. The major introduction for the 2015 season, he says, “is a woven collection with teak accents. Roughly 60 percent of our early-buys have representation with that collection.”

Parsons noted that Gloster’s best-selling woven collection is Plantation, a John Caldwell design introduced in 2000. “We recognize the strength of woven,” he says.

Ratana and Pelican Reef each report sales up by more than 30 percent in 2014. Pelican Reef holds the license to produce furniture under the Panama Jack brand. President Allen Calzadilla says the Pelican Reef product lineup has been scaled back as the company rides the success of Panama Jack.

Rum Cay from Panama Jack.

“2015 is going to be incredible,” Calzadilla says. The company opened a permanent showroom in High Point last fall; a showroom at the Las Vegas Market opens in August. Pelican Reef maintains its showroom at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago.

The company introduced five new Panama Jack collections for 2015, including PJ Kids, a dining group sized for children ages three to seven.

A strengthening economy and robust hospitality sales helped Ratana double its forecast sales growth for 2014. “Hospitality is growing, and it’s time for some (hotel) facelifts, which really helped our bottom line,” says U.S. Sales manager Lawrence Wong. “As long as we keep evolving the product, there will be a strong demand for it.”

The woven category may be mature. The market may indeed be flooded, but that’s not a catastrophe.

The woven trend has yet to crest, and all players are betting on a continuing surge. The popularity of woven casual furniture continues to rise, lifting all boats.