Archive for August 30th, 2007
ST. LOUIS,(PRIME NEWSWIRE) — Ralph P. Scozzafava, Vice-Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Designate of Furniture Brands International, Inc. (NYSE:FBN), today announced the appointment of William G. (Skipper) Holliman as President of Lane Furniture Industries, Inc.
Mr. Holliman has served Lane in various positions of increasing responsibility, including roles in production planning and quality control, as a plant manager, as Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, and most recently as Executive Vice-President, Supply Chain. In his new role as President, Mr. Holliman will report directly to Mr. Scozzafava.
Mr. Scozzafava commented, “I am pleased that Skipper has agreed to take on these additional responsibilities. He has vast experience in our industry, he is well-respected throughout the Company, and he enjoys outstanding relationships with our key suppliers and customers. We look forward to the many contributions we know he will continue to bring to Furniture Brands.”
Mr. Scozzafava also announced today that he has accepted the resignation of Jeff Young as President and Chief Executive Officer of HDM Furniture Industries. Mr. Scozzafava commented that the separation was by mutual agreement. “We appreciate Jeff’s efforts on behalf of the HDM companies since he joined us in April 2002, and we all wish him well.”
John T. (Tom) Foy, President and Chief Operating Officer of Furniture Brands will oversee the day-to-day operations at the HDM companies on an interim basis. Mr. Scozzafava continued: “Tom has served in a number of management capacities at Lane, Broyhill, and Furniture Brands in recent years. I know HDM will benefit from his experience and oversight.” The company will begin a search for a permanent replacement at HDM, and will evaluate internal and external candidates.
About Furniture Brands
Furniture Brands International is one of America’s largest residential furniture companies. The company produces, sources and markets its products under six of the best-known brand names in the industry — Broyhill, Lane, Thomasville, Henredon, Drexel Heritage and Maitland-Smith.
The Furniture Brands International logo is available at http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=2757.
CONTACT: Furniture Brands International, Inc.
Lynn Chipperfield
314-863-1100
August 30th, 2007
MINNEAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Select Comfort Corporation (NASDAQ:SCSS), the nation’s leading bed retailer and creator of the Sleep Number® bed, will provide its regularly scheduled update about business trends for the third quarter of 2007 after close of the financial markets Sept. 12, 2007. The communication will be pre-recorded. A digital replay of the business update will be accessible after 4:00 p.m. EDT that day and will remain available until 6:00 p.m. EDT Sept. 19, 2007 by calling (888) 286-8010. International callers please use (617) 801-6888. The pass code for the replay is 98070952. The webcast and a transcript of the recording will be accessible through the investor relations section of the company’s Web site at www.selectcomfort.com/investors.
About Select Comfort Corporation
Founded more than 20 years ago, Select Comfort Corporation is the nation’s leading bed retailer(1). Based in Minneapolis, the company designs, manufactures, markets and supports a line of adjustable-firmness mattresses featuring air-chamber technology, branded the Sleep Number bed, as well as foundations and sleep accessories. SELECT COMFORT® products are sold through its more than 460 company-owned stores located across the United States; select bedding retailers; direct marketing operations; and online at www.sleepnumber.com.
1Top 25 Bedding Retailers, Furniture/Today, August 14, 2006.
August 30th, 2007
BY Elaine Markoutsas | UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
When it comes to stuff, kids rule. And the clutter quotient can be huge — Transformers, robots, Matchbox cars, Barbies, crafts, video games, iPods, sports equipment, schoolbooks and clothes.
So it’s no surprise that room design for kids has come of age, with a growing palate for personal style equal to the serious need for storage.
Manufacturers are listening and thinking outside the box. Options include containers designed to fit everything from bookshelves to benches to window seats. And there are versatile, multitasking furnishings that address most of the activities that take place in children’s rooms — from playing games and entertaining friends to watching videos and doing schoolwork.
Furnishings for kids range from pink or aqua mini-fridges to plush headboards with plugs for MP3 players. There’s bath furniture, lighting and all the accessories to match. They’re available at retailers like Pottery Barn Kids and The Land of Nod, e-tailers and catalogs like Posh Tots and Pottery Barn’s PBteen, and kids’ divisions of grown-up favorites such as Ethan Allen, Garnet Hill and The Company Store.
Some style and design trends parallel those happening in other parts of the home.
Woven storage baskets, some of which are designed to snugly fit into their own cubby shelving, can take on a playful look with the introduction of color. Some baskets come in bright hues or with colorful fabric liners. Besides baskets, there are bins of all types — canvas, metal locker-style, plastic and bright collapsible mesh. A storage “organizer,” a stand housing 23 colorful bins, was a recent special for $40 at Target.
Even nurseries have been refreshed with traditional pieces that perform more than one function. The Madison changing-table system shows how a basic cupboard with a surface for changing also can include a full dresser (two big drawers, two small) and side cabinets with shelves. The whole thing is connected with a shelf across the top, a logical site for stereo equipment and television when the child is older.
Along with convertible cribs that can morph into twin beds or daybeds, furniture for kids is designed to grow with them and is built sturdy to last, the goal of Stanley Furniture’s Young America collection.
“In the last few years, there’s been much more focus on storage and organization,” says Jamie LaPorta, merchandising director for The Land of Nod, a Wheeling, Ill.-based company that started as a catalog business 11 years ago and eventually partnered with Crate and Barrel.
“Today there are so many more choices to customize,” LaPorta says.
A popular piece for The Land of Nod has been Under the Big Top storage, which is essentially a set of wire shelves topped with a fabric tent.
“The piece ends up being a focal point in a room,” LaPorta says. “It adds a bit of whimsy because of its size and scale. It’s child-friendly,” and, she adds, appealing to adults because of its design aesthetic.
Although there is more furniture available for kids than ever before, manufacturers have not ignored homeowners short on space. The bed is a prime candidate for add-ons, and the space underneath is a logical option. Built-in drawers offer places for clothing or toys. Some beds now have shelves beneath for books or baskets.
Bookshelves also tuck in behind headboards, which may be fitted with cork for a handy bulletin board or shelves, some of which connect to units on either side of the bed like nightstands that have sprouted up the wall.
Among the more clever space-savers is a bunk bed that packs storage into one end (drawers and shelves) and includes a desk at the other end.
Another bunk, part of Stanley Furniture’s Young America collection, features a twin over a full-size bed. Beneath the full bed is an optional “captain’s drawer storage unit,” which features four drawers and two shelves.
Like desks for adults, children’s desks have pullout drawers for keyboards, containment for cords and hideaway space for computer towers. The proportions are appropriate to the age group.
“They’re designed from a child’s perspective, the right size and scale and height,” LaPorta says. Manufacturers “have paid attention to details, the way the features work: Can [children] handle opening a drawer, for example,” she says.
“One of the reasons bins work for children,” says LaPorta, “is that they’re easy to use. It organizes in smaller chunks and ends up looking very clean. What’s in the bin may not be so clean and tidy, but we only see the fronts — which are all clean and organized.”
“The concept of personal style is just as important for children as it is for adults,” says Jackie Hirschhaut, vice president of the American Home Furnishings Alliance. “Childhood is about finding your personality, and one of the best ways to express that is through your surroundings.”
August 30th, 2007
By TERRI SAPIENZA,THE WASHINGTON POST
As soon as Kerry Triffin spotted a bed crafted from New Zealand rimu wood at a New York design show last year, he wanted to carry it in his Connecticut furniture shop. His wife had a different idea.
She pointed to another bed from the same collection, made of the same sustainable wood but equipped with a Bose surround-sound speaker system and an iPod docking station.
“She said, ‘That’s the one that’s going to sell,’ ” Triffin says now. “And she was right.”
Six years ago, the iPod was still weeks away from its debut. Today, the little (and always getting littler) portable music player reigns over the media industry and, increasingly, our lives.
People take their iPods to the office, to the gym, into the shower. The devices have infiltrated the fashion industry, with jeans, jackets, shirts, belts, gloves — even underwear — being designed to accommodate them. Greg Joswiak, vice president of iPod Product Marketing, said the iPod has spawned “a vibrant ecosystem” of more than 4,000 consumer products, from protective cases and speaker systems to wireless remote controls and earphones. According to Apple, more than 70 percent of new-model U.S. cars offer iPod connectivity. Soon, airlines will offer in-flight docking ports to power and charge the devices.
Now the furniture industry is getting in on the act.
No longer restricted to entertainment centers and home offices, iPods and other portable electronic devices are finding places to plug in all over the house: in beds and chairs with built-in speakers, lamps designed with docking stations and living room tables that double as universal charging stations. There’s even a toilet tissue holder that will charge and play an iPod and — at the other extreme — a $14,000 dining table with a built-in dock.
Music is everywhere
“It’s clearly indicative of how important music is in our lives and how synonymous iPod has become with the way people enjoy music,” Joswiak said. “It’s for customers to have music wherever they are.”
Jackie Hirschhaut, vice president of the American Home Furnishings Alliance, said there has been a rise in tech-friendly furniture at the past several High Point Markets, the largest furniture trade show worldwide, with pieces that integrate the iPod-compatible docking stations now being introduced into the mainstream.
Like almost every tech-savvy consumer innovation, it all starts with teens. Many furniture manufacturers begin by testing the tween and teen markets, where iPods and cellphones are as common as notebooks and backpacks.
Earlier this month, Target launched a collection of upholstered headboards for teenagers with built-in speakers from Skyline Furniture, an Illinois manufacturer. The headboards start at $199 and are compatible with any MP3 player. If the design proves popular, Skyline plans to introduce similar tech features in its chairs and benches.
This is a design path Skyline has explored before. Back in the ’70s, the company manufactured sofas and headboards with integrated eight-tracks. “They were relatively successful,” said Skyline designer Meganne Wecker, laughing at a technology that now seems quaint. “Not like the iPod, but they sold pretty well for the time.” (At 28, Wecker is far too young to have actually worked on eight-track designs, but she heard about them from former employees.)
Pottery Barn also went after the youth market first, with an MP3-compatible chair and shelving unit sold through PBteen last year. Based on the success of those two items, this summer the company launched its Smart Technology collection, an entire line of furniture and accessories designed with all portable electronics in mind: bulletin boards with speakers; tabletop universal charging stations; organizational cabinets with hidden power strips; desks with integrated outlets, phone and Ethernet jacks and USB ports.
Also this summer, Aspenhome, a furniture manufacturer in Phoenix, launched a line of multi-tasking furniture, including night and end tables with drawers for recharging devices, filing paperwork and storing printers and laptops.
But perhaps nothing rivals the iPod enthusiasm represented by the $14,000 Concerto table by furniture designers Nicholas Lovegrove and Demian Repucci. Shaped like a grand piano, the high-gloss white dining table has speakers under the middle leaf and an iPod docking station near the center so the host can control dinner music without having to get up.
Obsolescence built in
With the dramatic look and price, the tables aren’t exactly flying out the door, Lovegrove said, but the iPod factor has given the designers visibility in markets they hadn’t previously reached, from music organizations to devout Mac users and bloggers. “The addition of the iPod has brought the table to another level entirely,” Lovegrove said. “It has opened an incredible amount of doors.”
But while designing furniture with integrated technology can seem a smart business move, there are risks involved.
“When you incorporate technology, it can take over,” Lovegrove said. “We wanted to make a beautiful piece of furniture, primarily, not a tech piece. There is a fine balance. … We didn’t want [the table] offered in a Sharper Image.”
Not that Lovegrove and Repucci are complaining. In fact, they have built on their iPod-fueled visibility by offering recipes for use with their table, which can be found on their Web site, concer totable.com. A playlist of downloadable dinner music is also available — from iTunes, of course.
The chief danger in designing home furnishings around technology is the inevitability that the bed or dining table will be rendered obsolete by the very technology it’s built around. How long will it be before the currently innovative video-gaming chairs with speakers, surround sound and wireless capabilities wind up on Craigslist alongside the hulking TV armoires made unnecessary by flat-screen technology?
“There’s probably going to be a time in the not-too-distant future when we look back at these items, and they will look passe,” Hirschhaut said. “There’s always going to be something new.”
August 30th, 2007
MARY ELLEN LLOYD
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Furniture Brands International Inc. on Wednesday named William G. “Skipper” Holliman president of its Lane Furniture Industries unit.
Holliman is the son of Furniture Brands Chief Executive and Chairman W.G. “Mickey” Holliman.
The St. Louis-based residential furniture company, one of the largest in the United States, said the younger Holliman most recently served as executive vice president of Lane’s supply chain. The elder Holliman is retiring as CEO early next year but will stay on as chairman until May 1.
Separately, Jeff Young, who served as president and chief executive officer of HDM Furniture Industries, resigned by mutual agreement, the company said. HDM is the operations of Henredon, Drexel Heritage and Maitland-Smith Furniture, which make up some of the company’s higher-end brands.
Tom Foy, Furniture Brands’ president and chief operating officer, will oversee operations at HDM while the company seeks a permanent replacement for Young, who has been with the company since 2002. Foy has overseen Lane’s operations since a management shake-up in mid-2005, and he had stepped in to manage the Broyhill brand when it was between CEOs.
Furniture Brands has had numerous executive changes at its operating companies in recent years as it competes against a flood of cheaper imports. In June, the company named a consumer products industry veteran as its choice to replace CEO Holliman on his retirement. Ralph Scozzafava, most recently a vice president at Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., becomes Furniture Brands’ chief executive on Jan. 1.
Shares of Furniture Brands rose 33 cents, or 3 percent, to $11.21 in afternoon trading Wednesday.
———
Monica M. Clark contributed to this report.
August 30th, 2007
Harlem Furniture is leasing space in a portion of the former Cub Foods and Flower Factory space near Castleton Square mall.
According to a statement from Melissa Hancock of Sitehawk Retail Real Estate, the 32,788 square feet is at 5651 Castleton Corner Way.
Broker Fred Feinblum represented Harlem, the statement said. Larry Davis of Sitehawk represented the owner of the Castleton space, Thomas English Retail Real Estate.
The RoomPlace at Harlem Furniture announced earlier this month it is moving into Central Indiana with two locations. The company, based in Lombard, Ill., announced it would put a store in a former Frank’s Nursery, 5651 E. 86th St. in Castleton, and construction has started on a building along U.S. 31 on Indianapolis’ Far Southside.
It was not immediately known whether the 86th Street location was a separate location from the Castleton Corner Way site.
The RoomPlace was attracted by Indianapolis’ proximity to the company’s central warehouse in Woodridge, Ill., “which allows for faster delivery times for our customers,” marketing manager Valerie Berman said earlier this month.
The RoomPlace added two stores last year and two this year. A Mishawaka store opened in February.
The 19-store chain has other locations in Merrillville, Chicago and Northeast Illinois. Sam Berman founded the company in 1912, and it remained a one-store operation until 1985. The Berman family still runs the business.
August 30th, 2007
By Yazdi Yahya
Beribi - Thomson Furniture marked its 22nd Anniversary last night at its showroom in Beribi with staff members and customers.
In her welcoming speech, Joyce Chen, the CEO of Thomson Furniture said, “Although Thomson Furniture has been around for more than 20 years, we decided that we would like to celebrate this year with our beloved customers and build better relationships.
“This is also to show appreciation for our staff that has grown with us. We started with five and that number has increased to 30,” she added.
After a cake-cutting ceremony, dinner and a lucky draw, awards were also presented to employees of the month and long-serving members, followed by some performances from the staff. — Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin
August 30th, 2007
From Staff Reports
Jeff Young has resigned as president and CEO of HDM Furniture Industries, parent company Furniture Brands International announced Wednesday in a news release.
HDM, with headquarters in High Point, was formed in 2005 from the combined operations of Henredon, Drexel Heritage and Maitland-Smith.
In a news release, Furniture Brands stated Young’s resignation was “by mutual agreement.” Tom Foy, president and COO of Furniture Brands, will oversee the day-to-day operations at the HDM companies on an interim basis.
Furniture Brands also announced the appointment of William G. “Skipper” Holliman as president of Lane Furniture Industries Inc.
August 30th, 2007
By Andrew Nelson
The person who owns the former furniture plant at 2605 Livingston Road was inspecting the grounds early this afternoon when he discovered a dead body.
It is not known how the man died, said Jackson Police Department Sgt. Eric Smith. An autopsy will be conducted.
It is not known how long the body was there. “It was badly decomposed,” Smith said
Smith would not identify the owner.
A furniture plant had operated on the site since 1946. The last manufacturer to occupy it was Straits Furniture Co. in 1999.
Harold L. Gater/The Clarion-Ledger
To comment on this story, call Andrew Nelson at (601) 961-7067.
August 30th, 2007
ADAM BELL
One of Charlotte’s oldest stores, Mecklenburg Furniture Co. on Providence Road, has closed.
The store closed Monday, owner Melvin Vanderburg said today. He said he could not afford to operate it because of a big increase in rent.
Vanderburg said he bought Mecklenburg Furniture 17 years ago. The store opened in December 1940 and was known as Mecklenburg Furniture Shops then. It moved from Tryon Street to Providence Road in 1966.
Vanderburg, who runs privately held K-Town Furniture Inc., also has closed furniture stores in Concord and Salisbury. He said he is concentrating on his Kannapolis furniture store operations around Cannon Village.
August 30th, 2007
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