Furniture factory shipments down 12% in August
Best year-to-year comparison since September 2008
Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, November 2, 2009
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HIGH POINT — Orders in August were down 12% from a year earlier for U.S. residential furniture factories, the best year-to-year comparison since September 2008, according to Smith Leonard.
While 80% of participants in the accounting and consulting firm's monthly survey of factories reported their orders were down, they said the severity of the decline was easing.
For the year to date, orders are down 19% from the 2008 pace, with 90% of survey participants reporting declines.
Factory shipments, meanwhile, were down 18% in August and remained down 20% for the year to date. Some 90% of participants reported lower shipments for August and 93% said they were down for the year to date.
Ken Smith, managing partner of Smith Leonard, said in his monthly Furniture Insights newsletter that the August results, "while not great, at least began to move in a better direction." He said people he talked with at last month's High Point Market felt that business had leveled off over the past four to six months.
"The feeling is that we finally may have hit bottom. Most did not feel we had started to improve significantly, but the feeling was that business was not getting much worse," Smith said.
He said, however, that credit remains a concern as banks are reluctant to extend new financing. "If business gets better, getting credit to buy inventory may be tough," he said.
"We saw lots of great product at market and had many comments that the buyers liked what they saw," Smith added. "Let's hope all of that turns into orders and the product sells through at retail."
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August orders down 12%
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