No improvement in delivery times for ordered furniture

[drcollie]

The overstock situation mainly applies to imports from Pacific Rim countries (China, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, etc). Those pieces are made in huge batches, maybe 200 identical units at a time on larger pieces, 800 at a time on smaller ones. What happened was EVERYONE ordered to the max, both companies that make product there and individual stores, because during Covid's peak people were coming in and buying most anything, emptying stores of floor stock. Everyone was sold out, every warehouse empty. So the natural business reaction was to order more, to not get caught short. A lot more. Now all that product has come rolling in and there is no where to put it. We are seeing massive supplier sales on imports that we carry - trouble is, we don't need the product and people are not asking for it. So it sits in the supplier's warehouse and they are getting killed on the monetary cost of carrying inventory. At the store level, bigger stores built new warehouses, figuring they could make a killing on having pieces in stock, ready to go. And they filled those warehouses up to where there is no more space. They are telling their freight carriers to halt deliveries and paying storage fees at those carriers while all the new product sits in trailers. They also have moratoriums on any new buying. So there are bound to be deals on imports - at any store.

Domestic product not so much, because that is all built to order, one at a time. There are no large batches. Demand is still out there, because people still have money and good paychecks. The difference is they are not taking just anything to fill space and will wait to get what they want.

At The Keeping Room, Sarah and I decided not to get into that ordering frenzy, not with all the talk of recession. We cut back, and have a very good balance right now. Our store is full to the brim, and we have maybe ten pieces in the warehouse that are either doubles of what is in the store or waiting for a space to open up on the floor.

Special orders are NOT improving on time for domestic items, no matter how hard everyone wishes or what they may say on their website. Everyone is fond of saying 6 months right now, the reality is that it's closer to 8 months for most and will even to go 10 months. One curiosity however is Hancock and Moore tufted is arriving in about 4 months. Turns out their tufting team is all caught up (they are specialized and don't work on regular items) so we are getting faster deliveries on tufted upholstery vs non-tufted. Motion furniture as a category still is the longest due to mechanism shortages.