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From Home Furnishing Business
Chromcraft-Revington Sales Lower With Rep Changes
May 14,
2007 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in Casual Dining on May 2007
Chromcraft-Revington, West Lafayette, Ind., said a soft retail climate, import pressures and a major change in the companys sales structure resulted in a 26.3 percent decline in first-quarter sales.
Chairman and CEO Ben Anderson-Ray said the company realigned its sales force in a way the company believes will boost performance as market conditions improve. Prior to the change, Chromcraft-Revington used multi-line sales representatives, but began shifting to exclusive sales representatives during the quarter. He said the old system made it difficult to coordinate sales activities and cross-sell the companys brands under the CR Home banner. Those brands include Chromcraft, Peters-Revington, Sliver Furniture and Sumter.
As an element of the companys transformation, we restructured the residential sales activity with unified management and exclusive representation of the companys brands, Anderson-Ray said. This transition better aligns the sales organization with the long term goals of the companys new vision. The soft retail conditions may have aggravated the sales decline of this transition.
With sales of $33.8 million during the quarter that ended March 31, Chromcraft-Revington recorded a net loss of $1.17 million as compared to net earnings of $1.12 million during the same period of 2006. The results include a pre-tax charge of $358,000 related to the costs of shutting down facilities as part of the companys restructuring last year.
Commenting on the restructuring, Anderson-Ray said, In 2006, we began a transformation of the company toward a new vision based on a more integrated organizational model that utilizes research-based consumer understanding to develop products using a global supply chain and U.S.-based built-to-order customization capabilities.
In the announcement, company officials said shipments of products for the commercial market increased over 2006. The commercial division was not affected by the sales realignment.