Industry eating import mistakes
Carole Sloan, Senior Contributing Editor -- Furniture Today, February 11, 2008
With all of the angst now prevailing in furnitureland about the shaky health of both suppliers and retailers, one underlying commentary keeps coming into the conversations.
There's an awful lot of distressed furniture product sitting in warehouses and stores across the country — as well as molting offshore. As retailers who took the self-assured path of direct imports now are choking on their efforts, and suppliers are sitting with warehouses full of the wrong blue, or fabric or finish that didn't measure up to what was ordered, there's inventory galore going to the off-price guys.
What this is doing is infiltrating virtually every community across the country as retailers and suppliers seek to get some of their costs out of these mistakes and get some cash flow. And it doesn't look like this trend will ebb over the next months.
It definitely will have a major impact on overall merchandising in furnitureland.
Las Vegas Market postscript:
The powers that be at the World Market Center obviously heard the angst of visitors last winter and corrected the transportation woes. The recent market's cab lines, even with a couple hundred folks waiting, took no more than 15 to 20 minutes. It was a no-problem situation compared with '07.
The shuttle buses also seemed to be running on a more frequent basis and with an expanded fleet.
But it can't be all good, so here are this year's Vegas challenges.
Not one, but many visitors and exhibitors in the Pavilions and off-site showplaces in the MGM Grand remarked about the absence of aisle indicators or other designations to help guide people to specific aisles or sectors. No one on the support teams in any of the temps seemed to have a roadmap of what company was sited where, an issue that came up with exhibitors over and over. It's a simple and quick fix — not like getting a fleet of cabs and buses.
