Furniture Comeback

The adaptability of the automobile to familiar uses of the sofa, such as long talks, love-making and sleep, was a minor worry to furniture manufacturers long before 1929. A major worry was the fact that efficient mass production of automobiles gave buyers more for their money than they could get in walnut or fumed oak. In the 1920s automobiles displaced furniture as "Public Want No. 2" (No. 1--necessities of food and clothing) and contributed to the decline in furniture sales which began in 1927 after an all-time peak of $800,000,000 the preceding year. Other main cause was the downward curve of the building cycle, to which the furniture business is intimately geared. Thus the biggest problem of Depression-etherized furniture makers was how to cut costs through standardization and better planning, while their biggest hope was a revival of home furnishing along with home building.

Last week furniture men had convincing data on the extent to which they have met their problem, realized their hope. An annual survey of the industry compiled by Seidman & Seidman, top-flight furniture accountants, showed an aggregate net profit of 4.04% on sales of $430,000,000 in 1936, compared to a net loss of .6% on $307,000,000 sales in 1935. This late comeback coincided with a jump in residential building from about 150,000 new homes in 1935 to an estimated 275,000 in 1936. It was the industry's first profitable year since 1929 and shone brightly indeed after the darkness of 1932, when furniture makers sold only $206,000,000 worth of goods, losing $25 on every $100 worth. It was also a higher profit on sales than the industry made in 1928, though in that year sales were around $600,000,000. Good reason for this seemed to lie in the fact that overhead costs (factory, selling, administrative), which in 1932 amounted to $54.91 Per $100 sales, had been whittled down to $33.53 in 1935, $30.11 in 1936.

Seidman & Seidman's figures on comparative sales of different types of furniture showed that U. S. citizens were inclined to spend their first furniture money on upholstered chairs, studio couches, etc., putting makers of upholstered furniture in the black ink a year ahead of the industry as a whole. Their aggregate operating profit of 3.07% on sales in 1935 was more than doubled last year. Second best showing was made by manufacturers of novelty and specialty goods, who also made an operating profit, 2.15% in 1935, increased it to 4.86% in 1936. Laggards were the manufacturers of "case goods," or dining room and bedroom suites. Their operating loss was 2.13% in 1935. But last year homemakers apparently got around to suites and the manufacturers turned the corner handsomely with a profit of 2.96%.

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