Larry Thomas
I'm Larry Thomas, business editor of Furniture/Today. In my 17 years here, I've written stories about everything from box springs to wicker chairs. For 12 years, I wrote the weekly "Bedding Today" column, which is now in the capable hands of executive editor David Perry. Since being named business editor in 2001, most of my stories have dealt with home entertainment furniture, recliners, financial news and furniture markets. I look forward to discussing key industry issues in this forum, and I welcome your thoughts and opinions.
Title: Bedding Editor
Email: l.thomas@reedbusiness.com
Special OrderLink This | Email This | Comments (0) A surprising twist to a controversial trucking programThe long-running battle over the controversial “clean truck” program at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach took a surprising turn recently when the Long Beach port reached an out-of-court settlement on a lawsuit filed last year by the American Trucking Assn. According to a story in the Journal of Commerce , the Long Beach port said it would not require trucking companies... MoreLink This | Email This | Comments (1) Furniture can make you laugh -- no jokeOrdinarily, furniture is not a humorous product, but I’ve stumbled across several recent news items that mentioned furniture and brought a smile to my face at the same time. That’s never an easy task, and has been an especially difficult one during the past year or so. The most recent furniture funny was uncovered in an excerpt from tennis great Andre Agassi’s... MoreLink This | Email This | Comments (7) Wanek, Buffett sustain Forbes 400 lossesThe long-running furniture industry slump has claimed another victim: Ron Wanek. The chairman of Ashley Furniture has dropped off the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Forbes 400 list. Wanek was No. 321 on the 2008 list with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion, but his name appears only in a list headlined “Dropouts” in the magazine’s Oct. 19... MoreLink This | Email This | Comments (1) Wickline bankruptcy serves double dose of sadnessIt’s never fun to write a story about a retailer or manufacturer filing for bankruptcy, but I was particularly saddened to write about Wickline Bedding , a family-owned independent mattress producer near San Diego that recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. When I was Furniture/Today’s bedding editor from 1990 to 2001, I always looked forward to chatting with... MoreLink This | Email This | Comments (3) No tears needed for Simmons ownerDon’t feel sorry for T.H. Lee, the private equity firm that has been the majority owner of Simmons since 2003. On the surface, it looks like the firm stands to lose a boatload of money by agreeing to sell the bedding producer to affiliates of Ares Management and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan for about $760 million. After all, an investor group led by Lee paid $1.1 billion for the... More |
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