Daily News Archive
Brought to you by Home Furnishings Business
June 9,
2008 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on June 2008
Actor Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Shrute on NBC’s “The Office”, hung out in the HON showroom at NeoCon 2008 yesterday.
Wilson was on hand to help the company roll out its line of contract office furniture at the show. The actor spent about four hours in the showroom signing autographs.
Before joining the cast of “The Office,” Wilson first gained acclaim from television fans and critics alike as somber mortician’s apprentice “Arthur Martin” on HBO’s Emmy-winning series, “Six Feet Under.” He has also guest-starred on other television programs and has a number of film credits to his name, including a cameo in the Oscar-winning film, “Juno.”
June 9,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Home Office on June 2008
Steelcase, an office furniture maker based in Grand Rapids, Mich., received seven Best of NeoCon awards at the show in Chicago this week, including three gold awards.
Gold medal winners include c:scape in the furniture systems category. Designed to enhanced collaboration, it features a desk that slides forward to reveal a built-in connection zone to provide users with easy access to technology and storage. The company also received a gold medal in the conference table category with media:scape, which is designed to help teams share information with a retractable “puck” that multiple users plug their laptops into to show and share information. The third gold medal was in the medical institution category.
In addition, the company received one of three silver awards for the Walk-Station, which combines a workstation with a treadmill to allow sedentary office workers to exercise while completing work tasks.
The Best of NeoCon awards are sponsored by Merchandise Mart Properties, the International Interior Design Association, the International Facility Management Association and publications including
Contract and
McMorrow Report.
June 9,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on June 2008
Rooms To Go, Seffner, Fla., the nation’s largest independent furniture chain, expects to sharply reduce downtime of its core network services with technology from Infoblox, Santa Clara, Calif., to deliver internal and external domain name resolution (DNS) and IP address assignment and management.
In an announcement by Infoblox Monday, the company said Rooms To Go has 1 million customers annually in its 130 stores in seven states, which require 24-7 availability of its network. The furniture retailer had tried other products for its core network service, but experienced multiple DNS failures and network downtime. The company also was seeking a solution that offered a disaster recovery solution.
“We needed a secure and reliable solution, and Infoblox delivered,” said Jason Hall, Rooms To Go’s IT manager. “With our business dependence on the network, failure is not acceptable. With our previous DNS solutions, we experienced multiple outages, downtime and instability. The Infoblox solution has given Rooms to Go a strong, secure, highly available and affordable solution.”
June 9,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Delivery on June 2008
The nation’s continuing economic slowdown will keep cargo traffic at major retail container ports below last year’s levels through this summer and early fall, but month-to-month numbers are climbing and ports should see a return to year-over-year growth by Halloween, according to the monthly Port Tracker report released Monday by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Global Insight.
U.S. ports surveyed handled 1.26 million twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU) of container traffic in April, the most recent month for which actual numbers are available. That’s up 8.9 percent from March, which registered the lowest volume in two years, but down 4.7 percent from April 2007.
“The numbers are still below last year but they are steadily climbing,” NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said. “That’s in line with forecasts that the economy could begin its slow recovery this fall and reflects retailers’ sales expectations for the holiday season.”
May was estimated at 1.3 million TEU, down 5.7 percent from a year ago, and June is forecast at 1.34 million TEU, down 8.1 percent. July is forecast at 1.4 million TEU, down 2.8 percent; August at 1.46 million TEU, down 0.3 percent; and September at 1.43 million TEU, down 3.1 percent. October is forecast at 1.48 million TEU, a 2.7 percent increase that would represent the first year-to-year rise since July 2007, when 1.44 million TEU were handled compared with 1.4 million in July 2006.
Meanwhile, all U.S. ports covered by Port Tracker—Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah on the East Coast; and Houston on the Gulf Coast—are rated “low” for congestion, the same as last month.
“The covered ports are operating without congestion from the harbor to the gate,” Global Insight Economist Paul Bingham said. “One piece of good news is that progress has been reported in the West Coast longshore labor union contract negotiations. We hope this is a positive sign that a new contract will be reached without a significant work stoppage. Other than this contract, we don’t see any significant labor issues threatening the ports, and expect port and transportation labor to continue to be adequate over the next six months.”
Port Tracker, which is produced by the economic research, forecasting and analysis firm Global Insight for NRF, looks at inbound container volume, the availability of trucks and railroad cars to move cargo out of the ports, labor conditions and other factors that affect cargo movement and congestion.
June 9,
2008 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Mattresses on June 2008
Leggett & Platt, Carthage, Mo., best known for its pioneering work in innerspring sleep surface technology, recently was named one of the Top 35 Innovative Companies by the Patent Board’s Consumer Products Patent Scorecard in partnership with
The Wall Street Journal.
The last nine months at Leggett & Platt have seen the creation of the groundbreaking new Innovation, Design, Engineering and Acceleration (IDEA) Center for research and development, as well as the revolutionary Starry Night™ Sleep Technology Bed that debuted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Leggett’s commitment to scientific advancement is communicated via its new tagline, “Innovation Redefined,” as well as its extensive patent portfolio. The company holds approximately 1,100 patents granted and has about 650 in process. In addition, it has registered almost 750 trademarks, with more than 200 in process associated with continuing operations.
According to the Consumer Products Patent Scorecard published in
The Wall Street Journal’s Money & Investing section on May 6, Leggett & Platt ranks among the Top 35 Innovative Companies in the Consumer Products industry sector. Other companies listed alongside Leggett in the Top 35 for consumer products are Black & Decker, LG Electronics and Procter & Gamble Co.
“It is an honor to be listed among such distinguished company by
The Wall Street Journal,” said Mark Quinn, group executive vice president of sales and marketing for Leggett & Platt’s bedding division.
The Consumer Products Patent Scorecard is primarily ranked by Technology Strength, a measure to indicate overall strength of the company’s patent portfolio holdings with a combined measure of quality and quantity. Of the 115 companies tracked in this sector, Leggett & Platt ranks in the top third of its industry, rating higher than 70 percent of its competitors.
In addition to Technology Strength, each company’s portfolio is judged on the number of U.S. patents granted in a given year. Taking into consideration the peaks and valleys in the patents granted process, the Patent Board tracks patents granted for a 13-week period and averages those findings into an approximate number of yearly patents granted. As recognized by the Consumer Products Patent Scorecard, Leggett has been granted 28 patents in the past year.
“This accolade speaks volumes about the technology being created by Leggett,” said Quinn. “It reflects Leggett’s position as a thought leader in the bedding industry, as well as the company’s revived commitment to superior research and development and our growing portfolio of innovative, high-performance products.”