Wood goes contemporary, classic
By Powell Slaughter -- Furniture Today, April 25, 2005
High Point — Contemporary, classic (as in Neoclassical) and color are the three C's to remember in major case goods collections as buyers hit town for April market.
This week follows a welcome trend from October in terms of style — when brown does show up, it's in warm, burnished tones. Even a wave of British Colonial collections — no one wants to say "West Indies" anymore — get richer wood treatments with lots of veneer action and finishes that reveal more character in the wood than the standard chocolate finish.
It's been a while since High Point has seen this much contemporary furniture from companies that don't specialize in the category. Stanley, for example, is following up October's Sundance collection in cherry with the even more contemporary Midnight Sun in architectural white oak. The company's reasoning reflects a new approach to consumers.
"Moondance was helping our customers establish relationships with younger consumers, and (Midnight Sun) approaches the same contemporary consumer," said Phil Haney, executive vice president of marketing and sales for Stanley Collections.
"When that consumer thinks about buying furniture, she doesn't think, 'Do I want cherry or oak?' She thinks about what color furniture she wants, not the wood.
"We as an industry aren't doing a good enough job of pleasing that customer."
The ever-growing amount of Art Deco-inspired collections goes hand-in-hand with the attention to contemporary. Art Deco offers a modern look without the intimidation factor of stark contemporary furniture.
Fine Furniture Design & Marketing's Couture, for example, is transitional in nature, but leans strongly toward Art Deco.
"Retailers tell us a lot of consumers want to go contemporary but they're a little afraid," said Geoff Beaston, president and CEO. "This Couture collection is a happy medium."
For similar reasons, Lane's Art Deco-leaning Robert Idol collection of bedroom, dining, occasional and upholstery includes two flavors: the eclectic Union Square and suite-oriented Pacific Heights.
"We had two contemporary groups we'd done well with, so we came back with a full collection geared at a younger demographic than is customary for Lane," said Idol, vice president of corporate design. "We still have that dealer base that needs that dresser to match the other cases, so Pacific Heights is more suited-up than Union Square."
Color gets major play again this spring, especially among domestic producers, who are creating differentiation from Chinese-made goods by offering plenty of options and shorter lead times.
Hickory White follows up last year's American Home introduction this week with European Home, carrying on the color and finish story of the former but in lighter, mainly French styles, with touches of Louis Philippe and Victorian. All pieces are available in a combination of five color tones and a hazelnut wood finish on domestic cases augmented with custom hardware from Theodore Alexander in Vietnam.
"We wanted a more feminine collection and make it more consumer-friendly with a lot of options," said Chuck Auten, director of merchandising and chief operating officer of sister company CTH Sherrill Occasional. "We inventory the pieces in whitewood, and our goal is 30-day delivery."
Look for plenty of short groups from manufacturers with a mix of imports and domestic goods. A case in point is Broyhill. Along with three whole-home collections, including the sourced traditional 100th Anniversary collection, the company is rolling out nine U.S.-made bedrooms retailing from $1,799 to $2,399.
"We have a lot of style categories to address, and we have big plants we need to keep going," said Jeff Stone, vice president of merchandising. "These are volume bedroom sets."
Sources in both the domestic and import arenas said pricing might have finally bottomed out. While antidumping duties weren't as high as domestic producers had hoped, they could help establish a "floor" for pricing. And with the investigation over, importers have recourse to challenge their duty rate and domestic manufacturers can go target individual companies rather than a country's entire industry for investigation.
That's good news for producers getting hammered by cost increases for supplies and benefits.
"We're getting squeezed on margins — material costs have increased 6% to 25%, averaging in the mid- to high teens, and in the last three years, prices have deflated 20% to 35%," said Wyatt Bassett, executive vice president of Vaughan-Bassett. "If we weren't becoming more productive, we'd be way under water. But our business is up — we're running full steam, with overtime, and our backlogs are way up."
Sources continue to adjust their business strategies. Fine Furniture, for instance, comes into market with a rebuilt network of independent sales reps after running with an in-house sales team for almost for a year-and-a-half.
"With our executive sales team, we've really maxed out, and now with our new sales network we can expand our customer base," Beaston said. "We started hiring at the first of the year to approach regional players and independents."
Some major retailers carry FFDM as a house brand, so the company is sensitive to distribution issues.
"We really don't push Fine Furniture as a brand except to the trade, and that allows us some leeway in terms of things like piece selection," Beaston said. "That question is more important if we had, say, 20 dealers in Chicago instead of three ... We're sensitive of selling the same thing to people in the same trading area."
Bernhardt's shift to all-import case goods will have a big impact on its business strategy, said Rountree Collett, executive vice president, even though the case goods plant it just closed produced only 20% of the line.
"In our approach to the market, generally we were trying in some degree to fill that plant up, and now we're taking our cues from the market, purely and simply," Collett said. "We want to use Asia in a different way, and we've been there for 20 years. Now that we're free to do what makes sense in the marketplace, we're going to reposition. We're focusing on our opening price points and adding some look at the same time."
Bernhardt will shift to a mixed service model.
"We'll offer full containers, mixed containers, and we'll maintain substantial U.S. inventory for those customers who've always used our warehouse service," Collett said. "Those last customers don't get the container pricing, but they have zero inventory on our product. And now we're able to come in and offer a container-based model for our U.S. business."
A direct-container program was already in existence for a year-and-a-half doing private-label sourcing of Bernhardt-level product for select customers.
"We did a trial last market on the Bernhardt line to test that, so we'll roll that forward," Collett said, adding that mixed containers offer an opportunity for more business with small and midsize retailers. "If you give us three to four slots on the floor, you can get a container. We're giving them a lot more opportunity with direct containers."
