Retailers cut ties over petition
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, November 23, 2003
Columbus, Ohio — Top 100 stores American Furniture Warehouse and Value City Furniture/ American Signature Home have cut ties with domestic manufacturers supporting the antidumping petition against China.
"There's no question that doing business with these folks is over," said David Thompson, president of American Signature, parent of 80-store Value City and 15-store American Signature Home. "I'm not looking to do business with people that are attacking our business."
He wouldn't name those companies cut off nor say how much business his stores had been doing with them. "We've done a lot of business with a lot of these people in the past," he said, "and we still buy a lot of furniture in the United States."
Englewood, Colo.-based American Furniture Warehouse has stopped ordering from petitioners Vaughan-Bassett, Michels-Pilliod and Vaughan, said President Jake Jabs.
The retailer was doing more than $1 million with the companies, although the bulk of that was with one of three groups it carries from petition leader Vaughan-Bassett, he said. The others made minimal contributions to sales, and Jabs said he wasn't planning to carry Vaughan going forward anyway.
"I'm just against protectionism," Jabs said. "These tariffs are just a lose-lose-lose deal."
American Signature and American Furniture Warehouse are among those big retailers that import directly. Both also own domestic factories making product primarily for their stores.
The only other retailers believed to be cutting ties with antidumping petitioners are Seffner, Fla.-based Rooms To Go and Wheeling, Ill.-based Wickes, which RTG co-owns. Others have shied away from saying they will make similar moves, but have not ruled out the possibility.
Thompson said American Signature is working with the retailer group fighting the petition. He suggested the petitioners have failed to adjust, or to embrace global business strategies as a way of improving their own operations.
"The one thing I can tell those folks backing the petition — this is not (the movie) 'Ground Hog Day'," he said. "(The day) is not gong to start over again. If they're playing the game the old way, they're not going to succeed."
Value City/American Signature Home ranks No. 9 on Furniture/Today's list of Top 100 stores, with estimated 2002 furniture, bedding and accessory sales of $700 million. American Furniture Warehouse is No. 24, with nearly $300 million in 2002 furniture, bedding and accessory sales at its nine Colorado stores.
American's 18 top-selling bedroom groups are domestically made, according to Jabs, typically promotional groups from companies such as Ashley, Standard, Broyhill, Orman Grubb, John Boyd, Trendwood, Surewood Oak and Harden Mfg.
Twenty-seven U.S. manufacturers are seeking duties ranging from 158% to 441% on wood bedroom furniture from China.
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