Furniture News Briefs August 30, 2005

Furniture World Magazine

The DAILY JOURNAL, Northeastern Mississippi, reported on the recent Tupelo, MS Furniture market's drop in attendance. The article found at http://www.djournal.com noted that: "Either the Tupelo Furniture Market moves forward and survives or it ceases to exist. "They are the stark realities facing the market as it determines how to respond to a sparsely attended fall show. "Was it an anomaly as some have suggested, or was it an omen of tougher times ahead? ""We're at a crossroad," admitted TFM President and Chief Operating Officer Bill Cleveland. "We'll either do all the right things and continue to be a market where buyers and exhibitors want to come to, or we don't and they stop coming." "Writing the obituary for the two-decades-old market may be a bit premature, but it's clear the market must, as one industry analyst has said, "reinvent itself." While some exhibitors said the fall show's weak attendance was just a blip, others said they weren't sure the February spring event would be any better."" In addition the text described efforts by the "Market Authority" in High Point, NC to avoid losing ground to the new Las Vegas show. These included a new transportation hub and a new, large marketing budget. .............................. The HICKORY DAILY RECORD reported that Jim Jacumin, a state senator from Burke County has proposed the building of a technology in Hickory, NC to "assist furniture makers in developing new technology, equipment and processes to improve operations of domestic plants to compete with overseas manufacturers, especially China." The article can be found at: http://www.hickoryrecord.com ............................... According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, "More than 130 years after its founding in Chicago, the five remaining John M. Smyth's Homemakers furniture stores began liquidating last week and will shut their doors by the end of November. "The chain is a casualty of stiff competition in the furniture industry, high gas prices and its new owner's financial struggles." The full article can be found at http://www.chicagotribune.com.