Larry Thomas — Furniture Today,
\nARCHDALE, N.C. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Powered by the strong performance of its European and Canadian operations, bedding major Sealy reported third-quarter sales of $415.1 million, an increase of 6.4% from last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third quarter.
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\nNet income rose 11.9% to $29.4 million.<\/p>\n
The company said international sales, which make up about 25% of total sales, jumped 24.3%, but domestic sales rose just 2% and domestic unit volume declined 3.7%.<\/p>\n
Company officials said the sluggish economy, coupled with a new product rollout that is taking longer than expected, hurt U.S. bedding sales during the quarter.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our domestic performance this quarter was not up to Sealy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s historically high standards,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Jim Hirshorn, senior executive vice president of finance and operations.<\/p>\n
During a conference call with financial analysts, Hirshorn noted that the product rollout, which involved a complete revamping of the flagship Posturepedic and upper-end Stearns & Foster lines, was the largest in the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history. And he acknowledged that some models, particularly from the Stearns & Foster line, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t meet sales expectations.<\/p>\n
However, he told analysts the company already has identified the underperforming SKUs and has begun shipping several updated Posturepedic models. Several new Stearns & Foster models will be unveiled at the High Point Market.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The focus must now be on honing our execution and insuring that we have the right product in the stores at all times,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d added David McIlquham, chairman and CEO.<\/p>\n
McIlquham said Sealy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s competitors have been especially aggressive in recent weeks, trying to take advantage of the product transition. As a result, Sealy has cut prices on some models in order to maintain market share \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a moved he acknowledged will hurt margins in the short term.<\/p>\n
A bright spot domestically was Sealy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s specialty bedding business, where sales were up 50% over last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third quarter. McIlquham said growth opportunities in latex and visco-elastic bedding were especially promising, and said the company recently began test-marketing an airbed.<\/p>\n
For the first nine months of Sealy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fiscal year, worldwide sales increased 7.5% to $1.19 billion but net income slipped 1.6% to $52.5 million.<\/p>\n
The nine-month figures include $34.2 million in one-time charges related to the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent initial public offering of stock and $20.9 million in one-time costs from the product launch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Larry Thomas — Furniture Today, ARCHDALE, N.C. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Powered by the strong performance of its European and Canadian operations, bedding major Sealy reported third-quarter sales of $415.1 million, an increase of 6.4% from last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third quarter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}