Furniture sellers can't relax

Retailers hustle to attract customers as the housing slump dooms rivals

In the furniture business nowadays, even flat sales are considered good.

Havertys, Sealy and other major manufacturers have seen sales drop 25 percent or more since last year. La-Z-Boy, Pier 1 Imports and other chains are closing underperforming stores, and the number of corporate bankruptcies is skyrocketing.

But the Triangle's furniture retailers are faring better than most.

A handful of businesses have gone belly up, but overall, the Triangle has been exempted from the widespread closures that are sweeping other parts of the country.

"Business is OK," said John Gunter, who owns the area's four Home Comfort Furniture stores. "We're kind of holding our own with last year's numbers.

"We're not experiencing any huge growth, but we're not experiencing any slowdown either. ... I'm pleasantly pleased to be enjoying those results."

In the Triangle, merchants have been insulated by a stronger-than-average economy and a market in which home prices are still rising.

Home sales are the No. 1 driver of furniture sales, said Randy Good, executive vice president of Boyles Distinctive Furniture of Conover, about an hour northwest of Charlotte. That region of the state has long been associated with furniture manufacturing.

"Even if you downsize, most people still need to change something about their homes," Good said.

"When the housing market goes down, that kills us."

A new home was Mariana Wirsam's reason for buying new furniture this week.

Wirsam and her family moved to Apex 2 1/2 months ago, and on Thursday, she spent $2,600 at Heavner Furniture Market in Raleigh on a new dining room set, bedroom set, a desk and two sets of bookshelves.

Value and quality were most important to Wirsam, and she said she was pleasantly surprised by the prices she found.

"We've got a nice house, so we can't buy plastic furniture," she said. "But we didn't want to break the bank."

Good and bad news

Finding furniture shoppers, even value-conscious ones, is getting harder.

In the Triangle, sales of existing homes have been declining for 11 consecutive months.

Still, home prices have continued to rise. On average, homes in the Triangle sold for $245,788 in May, up 2.6 percent from a year ago, according to the Triangle Listing Service.

That's not too bad compared with harder-hit areas of the country like Broward County, Fla., where home sales have slumped and the average home value has dropped by nearly 20 percent over the past year.

"I've got friends with stores elsewhere in the country where they're having a lot more trouble," said Jerry Nowell, whose family has operated Nowell's Contemporary and Scandinavian Furniture since 1905. "We're still doing fine. It's just not as fine as we were a couple of years ago."

Mitigating factors

Nowell said he thinks the state's furniture sellers have fared a little better than others because North Carolina's employment base is solidly grounded in state government, universities and technology.

He theorized that the Triangle's high number of independent furniture retailers may be helping to keep the area's furniture retail scene strong, because independent business owners are more flexible and can react quickly to changes in the market.

"A chain might collapse even if it's doing well in North Carolina, because of their exposure to the Florida market," he said. "But a locally based independent rises and falls with the local economy. ... I don't need to wait for a decision from the home office in Idaho to adjust my advertising budget."

Nowell brought in a flood of new inventory at the beginning of the year and had a big sale, which bolstered his first-quarter revenue. The second quarter of the year was flat.