HIGH POINT – New furniture orders fell in April for 84% of the industry from last year, at least according to Smith Leonard’s monthly survey of residential manufacturers and distributors. Orders fell around 19% compared with last April, which in-turn were down 20% from April 2021.

Orders are also down from March, falling 16%. Year-to-date, orders are down 19% with more than 80% of participants reporting a decline.

Furniture shipments fell 28% compared to last April, and were down 14% year-to-date. For the month, shipments dropped for 88% of participants. Year-to-date, shipments fell 60%. Backlogs fell 8% from March and are down 64% from last April, when they still remained extremely elevated.

Receivable levels seem in line with monthly shipments, declining 31%. Inventories were 12% below last year after a 5% decline in March.

“It will take some time to determine what inventory levels need to be, due to the decline in business plus how much ‘protection’ is needed in the future due to supply shortages,” said Ken Smith, Smith Leonard co-founder and assurance partner.

“The number of factory and warehouse employees fell again,” he continued. “We continue to believe attrition is taking care of some of the decline as well as underperformers, but business needs to pick up soon to avoid more serious cuts.”

Smith gave some candid thoughts:

“There is some good news out there. In some recent talks with industry leaders, we are hearing that there may have been some uptick recently in at least some areas. We continue to hear that, at the retail level, some still have too much inventory, and customers coming in is not as brisk as some might like it, but overall, there seems to be some positive feeling.

“Things have been so difficult to compare, and we know that summertime usually has some slowdowns, but comments like ‘business can be described as good, not great’” make us believe that many have been surprised that business has not fallen off like some expected it to do.”

Source: https://www.furnituretoday.com/