TUPELO, Miss.\u00c2\u00a0—
\nWith retail business off to a reasonably good start in 2013, motion furniture producers believe they were able to sustain the momentum during the Tupelo Furniture Market\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s four-day run here late last month.
\n <\/p>\n
Producers said traffic was about even with, or slightly below, the February 2012 market, but said order-writing was strong and retailers were positive about business.
\n <\/p>\n
They said the vast majority of dealers they saw were from the Southeast, which is typical for Tupelo, but said a fair number from Midwestern and Western states also shopped their showrooms.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Based on what we are hearing, retail is off to a good start \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and that always is a good sign for this market,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Gene Gathagan, vice president of sales at glider rocker resource Brooks Furniture. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153People came in and they placed orders.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Gathagan and other executives said most retailers were looking to fill an immediate inventory need, which is why market specials and other promotions were just as popular as new products.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This has always been our best market for order-writing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Jerry Baker, executive vice president of PeopLoungers. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And people usually want their goods right away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Before the market opened, Baker said he predicted showroom traffic and order-writing would be down because many dealers opted to shop the recent Las Vegas market.<\/p>\n
However, he said he was happy to report that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the case.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We wrote as much business as we ever do,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Baker said, and the PeopLoungers\u00c2\u00a0 showroom was busy.
\nLarry Daigneault, president of glider rocker producer Newport Gliders, said he too was concerned traffic would decline significantly.<\/p>\n
But as it turned out, the decline was a modest one.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Most of the people who come here don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go to Vegas,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Daigneault said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And our business has been good since the first of the year.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
While producers such as Brooks and PeopLoungers had only a handful of new products at market, Ashley took the opposite approach,\u00c2\u00a0 aggressively trying to grow its motion furniture and recliner business.<\/p>\n
Kerry Lebensburger, president of the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upholstery division, said seven motion groups were introduced in Tupelo \u00e2\u20ac\u201d on top of the nine new groups unveiled in Las Vegas \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and all appeared to be hits with dealers.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Motion is our big push for the year, and so far it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going great,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n
Catnapper also had good results from a pair of\u00c2\u00a0 introductions, a $499 retail recliner and a sectional at $1,899 that featured three reclining seats.<\/p>\n
Don Hunter, senior vice president of major accounts, said the sectional could be used in a home theater configuration since one of the reclining seats is in the wedge \u00e2\u20ac\u201d an area that is little used in most sectionals.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had good traffic \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and we wrote a lot of business,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hunter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TUPELO, Miss.\u00c2\u00a0— With retail business off to a reasonably good start in 2013, motion furniture producers believe they were able to sustain the momentum during the Tupelo Furniture Market\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s four-day run here late last month. Producers said traffic was about even with, or slightly below, the February 2012 market, but said order-writing was strong and […]<\/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-256","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\/256","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=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}