Legends overhauls domestic line
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, July 28, 2008
LAS VEGAS — Case goods source Legends Furniture is discontinuing all of its domestic products and is replacing them with 150 new U.S.-made items at this week's Las Vegas Market.
In addition, the company has launched a U.S. warehouse program that is expected to greatly speed the flow of its domestic and imported lines.
Legends will warehouse 100% of its domestic mix at its Phoenix-area manufacturing plant. In the past, the U.S. goods were produced to order and were shipped to retailers in four to six weeks from the time of order. Now, with everything stocked in the warehouse, orders will be shipped in three days or less, said Tim Donk, Legends' marketing director.
That includes some of the company's import line, which already had been warehoused at the Phoenix-area plant. About half of the company's sales are of domestic product and half are imports, said Donk.
Legends also is showing 22 new imported pieces at this market, including casual and semiformal dining, occasional and accent furniture, and home entertainment.
But the big push is the domestic program. The 150 new pieces are spread out over what Legends calls Value and Signature collections.
The Value groups include home entertainment, home office and adult bedroom. The Signature collections include home entertainment, home office and juvenile furniture.
Company President Rick Schmidgall believes the moves are timely given the lull in the economy.
“From day one, we built this business knowing these challenging times would come,” he said. “We're in the perfect position to take advantage of this lull in the cycle. Up until now, it's been hard for us to even catch our breath. Now we have enough time to make some major improvements to our domestic program — we're upgrading everything on the domestic side of the house, from our products and finishes to our packaging and delivery.”
While he declined to disclose sales figures, Donk said the company expects the changes to help it continue the double-digit sales growth it has seen in the first two quarters.
“We think this will skyrocket what we are doing,” he said.
He added that the company expects to sell off the inventory of the domestic SKUs it is discontinuing by the end of October. It began building up its new inventory in late May and will continue to produce those items during the normally slow summer production schedule.
That likely will mean no short time or short-term layoffs for its estimated 200 workers, Donk said.
“This summer, we will need the bodies because we need the inventory,” he said.
