Daily News Archive
Brought to you by Home Furnishings Business
January 1,
2007 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in Casual Furniture on January 2007
Casual furniture producer Casual Creations has added two management positions to its team.
Ken Tucker has been named production manager, and Patricia Booth has been named product and inventory control manager.
Prior to joining Casual Creations, Tucker was with Carter Grandle and started his career in the casual furniture category with Halcyon. Booth also worked with Carter Grandle and Halcyon before joining Casual Creations.
January 1,
2007 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on January 2007
The Sustainable Furniture Council will hold a general organizing meeting during the Winter Las Vegas Market later this month. The SFC is an alliance of companies and individuals committed to the advocacy of sustainable business practices in the home furnishings industry, emphasizing the selection of eco-friendly wood choices that is either certified as reclaimed, or sourced from managed forests.
The gathering will take place 7 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 30 in the new Four Hands showroom, second floor of Building Two at the World Market Center, space B270.
The alliance is the brainchild of Gerry Cooklin, owner of South Cone, and a longtime advocate of sustainable practices--practices that he’s put into effect with his business.
The SFC held its first organizing meeting at the 2005 October High Point Market, and met again at High Point in October 2006, extending invitations to a variety of interests associated with the home furnishings industry, including manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and the trade press. Response was strong, and the group now counts among its members more than 40 different companies and individuals, including ABC Carpet & Home, Room & Board, and the Rainforest Alliance.
The Sustainable Furniture Council is seeking to incorporate as a non-profit organization by the end of the year. By-laws have been drafted, and governance committees have been appointed, including an initial board of directors. That board includes: Gerry Cooklin of South Cone, Executive Committee president; Amy Chender, ABC Carpet & Home, Executive Committee vice president; Susan Inglis, From the Mountain, secretary; Gat Caperton, Caperton Furniture Works, treasurer; Steve Freeman, Room & Board, Standards Committee co-chair; Tom Verellen, Verellen Inc., Standards co-chair; Jeff Hiller, Four Hands, Marketing Committee co-chair; and Margaret Casey,
Home Furnishings Business, Marketing co-chair.
At present, the SFC is intended to function in an advisory capacity to its members and the industry overall. Its immediate goals are to raise awareness of the sustainability issue within the industry; to encourage and assist companies in adopting sustainable practices; to serve as an information clearing house for members; and to promote sustainable products.
Looking further ahead, the group is working to develop participation guidelines that would allow members to use the SFC logo in all of their own communications and promotional activity as a symbol of compliance with specified sustainability standards. SFC will partner with existing organizations in the adoption of their wood harvesting and other sourcing protocols. Certified chain of custody letters documenting the sourcing of raw materials, with a strong and increasing commitment to the use of sustainable materials would be mandatory.
For more information, contact Jeff Hiller at jhiller@fourhands.com
January 1,
2007 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on January 2007
Asda, Britain’s second-largest supermarket chain, is taking direct aim at retailers like Ikea with plans to boost its furniture sales to nearly $1 billion within five years.
The supermarket chain, which is owned by Wal-Mart Stores, began selling furniture in 26 super-center stores and seven specialty Living stores a year ago and is dramatically expanding furniture offerings on its Web site, asda-furniture.co.uk, according to published reports. The reports quote company officials saying Asda hopes to gain a 5 percent share of Britain’s furniture market by offering free delivery by crews who also take away all packaging to be recycled. More than 800,000 furniture catalogs are currently being distributed through the company’s 300 stores.
Peter Pritchard, managing director of Asda’s non-food business, said the company will triple the number of furniture products currently being offered by Easter.
Targeting the value end of the furniture market, Asda will sell compact sofas for less than $600.
October 12,
2006 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2006
La-Z-Boy Inc. has revised its earnings expectations for the second quarter ending Oct. 28 to be in the 1 cents per share to 4 cents per share.
The company had previously announced an expected range per share of 11 cents to 15 cents for the quarter. During the second fiscal quarter of last year, the comapny had a loss of 12 cents per share, which included an after-tax restructuring charge of 10 cents per share related to the closing of its Waterloo, Ontario uphosltery factory and 1 cent in income from discontinued operations.
“The weaker-than-anticipated retail environment during the summer period leads us to now expect year-over- year sales for the quarter to be essentially flat compared to our original expectation of a mid-single-digit increase,” said Kurt Darrow, president and chief executive officer. “Although we saw a pick up in written sales over the Labor Day weekend, the momentum was brief and subsequent activity has been sporadic. Our reduction in earnings guidance is primarily due to lower-than-expected sales volume, which is impacting both our wholesale upholstery and casegoods businesses as well as our company-owned retail stores.”
Darrow continued, “While volume has been challenging, our core wholesale businesses are expected to show improving margin trends both year over year and sequentially from our fiscal first quarter, demonstrating the changes we’ve made in these operations are enabling us to operate more efficiently even on lower volume. However, in our retail segment, where we have a higher fixed-cost structure and are continuing to address transitional issues in many of our markets, the decrease in volume is having a significant impact on our expected operating results.”
The company plans to report this year’s fiscal second quarter operating results after the market close on Tuesday, Nov. 14, with its regular quarterly investor conference call the following morning, Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 8:30 a.m.
October 12,
2006 by in UnCategorized
By Home Furnishings Business in Occassional Tables on October 2006
A region hard-hit by furniture and textile plant closings got good news Thursday.
Swedish furniture retailer/manufacturer IKEA will build a new factory in Danville, Va., the company’s first U.S. production facility. The Times-Dispatch of Danville reported the announcement.
The $85 million, 810,000-square-foot plant initially will employ 300 workers, but that number could grow to as many as 740 over the next 10 years as the plant expands. Construction will begin in November, and production of bookshelves, coffee and side tables, and entertainment centers for IKEA’s North American stores should start in September 2007.
Officials from the Danville area cheered the landing of Swedish home-furnishings giant IKEA as a key step in rebuilding the area’s economy.
The plant will be part of IKEA subsidiary Swedwood International, which has more than 35 plants employing more than 13,000 people, mainly in Eastern Europe.
IKEA has more than 235 stores in 34 countries, including 28 in the United States and 11 in Canada.