By Karen Jacobs
\n ATLANTA, June 15 (Reuters) – Furniture companies are facing tougher times as higher gasoline prices and rising interest rates put more pressure on
\n
\n middle-class consumers, leading them to pull back from big-ticket purchases.
\n
\n This week, Stanley Furniture Co. (STLY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) became the latest in the sector to cite sales weakness when it warned that second-quarter results would fall short of previous estimates. Its shares closed down 4 percent on Thursday after falling as much as 7 percent earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen retail furniture (sales) be slow since March,” said Jerry Epperson, an furniture analyst with Mann, Armistead & Epperson in Richmond, Virginia. “The recovery just isn’t there right now.”<\/p>\n
Though furniture sales are typically weakest at this time of year and stronger in the second half, an added challenge is getting middle-income consumers to buy in an atmosphere of higher gasoline prices, minimal wage increases and slower housing growth, Epperson said.<\/p>\n
“The investment climate hasn’t been the best,” Epperson said. “Asset prices, particularly home prices, aren’t growing like they were before. We’re not seeing the home refinancings that put a lot of money in people’s pockets.”<\/p>\n
Last week, La-Z-Boy Inc. (LZB.N: Quote, Profile, Research) forecast profit for its current quarter below Wall Street estimates on flat sales, saying it was concerned about the economy in light of volatile energy markets and rising interest rates.<\/p>\n
And Furniture Brands International Inc. (FBN.N: Quote, Profile, Research) announced another plant closing at its Broyhill mid-priced brand, which has seen sales weakness in recent quarters.<\/p>\n
Geoff Wissman, vice president with consultants Retail Forward, says traditional furniture companies are also seeing more mass-market retailers beef up their furniture merchandise, making it harder, but more important to compete on price for middle-class dollars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Karen Jacobs ATLANTA, June 15 (Reuters) – Furniture companies are facing tougher times as higher gasoline prices and rising interest rates put more pressure on middle-class consumers, leading them to pull back from big-ticket purchases.<\/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-938","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\/938","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=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}