Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Smith Leonard Releases Outlook for May 2024
June 3,
2024 by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry 
Smith Leonard released their outlook for May 2024 concerning the industry and economic trends nationwide. To view their full report visit their website, here.
Highlights from the report follow:
Sales at furniture and home furnishings stores were down 0.5% in April 2024 from March 2024 on a seasonally-adjusted basis, and 8.4% from April 2023.
With the first quarter of 2024 in the books for purposes of our monthly stats, and approaching the mid-year mark on the calendar, available data continues to provide conflicting and somewhat perplexing indications for what the remainder of 2024 will hold.
Consumers continue to be anxious about future prospects despite certain positive economic trends (e.g. employment), and this seems to be negatively impacting discretionary spending on items such as home furnishings.
In addition, it now seems unlikely that the Fed will make any meaningful rate cuts in the next 6 months that would potentially drive additional housing activity and furniture purchases, with inflation still a focus and the elections looming large.
At this stage, it would seem the remainder of 2024 will continue to be challenging at the macro level, though nothing that the industry hasn’t managed through many times before. Individual operators will continue to look for opportunities amongst the challenges to be well-positioned for when things inevitably swing in the other direction.
New orders were up 2% in March 2024 compared to March 2023, continuing our streak of 9 out of the last 10 months with overall order growth over the prior year. New orders were flat compared to February 2024. Year to date through March 2024, new orders are up 5% compared to 2023.
However, shipments in March 2024 were down (17)% from March 2023, and also down (4)% from February 2024. Year to date through March 2024, shipments are down (12)% compared to 2023.
March 2024 backlogs were down (17)% compared to March 2023, but up 2% from February 2024.
Receivable levels were down (3)% from February 2024, and down (9)% from March 2023, which is materially in line with the decline in shipments for the same periods.
Inventories and employee levels are again materially in line with recent months, but down from 2023, indicating that companies have substantially adjusted levels to match current operations.