Pipefine Patio Furniture

Proposal expected to be introduced in U.S. Senate

An aide to Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said Tuesday that a bill that would likely affect some chemicals used in furniture could be introduced as early as next month.

Lautenberg has submitted similar bills twice since 2005 to reduce the exposure of workers, children and other consumers to toxic chemical substances, but both proposals died in committee.
According to an ABC News report earlier this week, the new bill could overhaul the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate chemicals.

The story said some harmful chemicals with links to cancer, neurological disorders and reproductive defects lack tight regulation and could be banned.

It also noted that such a bill would propose a broader set of regulations than some recent fixes dealing with high concentrations of lead and formaldehyde in certain Chinese-made products, which were limited in scope and dealt with specific crises.

On Feb.4, speaking to the Environment and Public Works subcommittee he chairs, Lautenberg said the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, fails to give EPA the tools it needs to protect against unsafe chemicals.

He added that in more than three decades of existence, the TSCA has allowed EPA to test only 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals in household products, and allowed the EPA to ban only five substances on the agency’s inventory of chemicals on the market.

“With EPA unable to require adequate testing, our children have become test subjects,” Lautenberg said in the statement. “Our children should not be used as guinea pigs. So it’s time to update the law and protect them.”

Airbed manufacturer and retailer Select Comfort recorded a profit of $35.3 million in the fourth quarter, reversing a net loss incurred in the same quarter in 2008.

Expansion will take place over next 18 months

With two new distribution centers in place and hints that the economic climate is improving, Rooms To Go plans to open 16 new stores over the next 18 months, its biggest growth push in at least the last three years.
 Jeff Seaman”Jeff Seaman”

Jeff Seaman, CEO of the 121-store Top 100 company, said the growth will boost its store count by about a dozen units.

The rest will be replacement stores, as the retailer converts some of its oldest and smaller showrooms to the updated 35,000- to 40,000-square-foot formats, most including attached Rooms To Go Kids & Teens showrooms. About three of the former Rhodes locations that RTG acquired in 2005 will be replaced with new stores, including the showroom in Mobile, Ala.

Roughly half of the net growth will come in Texas, including two new markets Seaman wouldn’t indentify. About three stores will open in Florida - including new market Destin - and the others will be in Georgia and Alabama, he said.

The midpriced RTG opened a 35,000-square-foot store in McAllen in South Texas in November and its fifth Houston-area store last month in Katy, but neither is counted in the 16-store expansion.

New stores are already under construction in Houston and Dallas and in the Perimeter Mall area of metro Atlanta, where RTG is filling out existing territory and expects to open within six months. In addition, a 30,000-square-foot Sarasota, Fla., store will soon be under construction to replace what Seaman called a “vintage 1991″ showroom, probably by the end of the year.

Seaman said his company started to see a turn for the better in business this past fall. Part of it had to do with easy-to-beat comparison numbers from 2008, “but it’s definitely taking a tick up,” he said.

Backlog also increases

New orders for residential furniture in November were 10% ahead of the previous November, according to the latest survey by the accounting firm Smith Leonard.

The results, published in the firm’s monthly Furniture Insights newsletter, followed October results that showed orders were flat with the previous October. That marked the first month since October 2007 that new orders were not lower than the same month from the previous year.

“(W)e may, in fact, be hitting the bottom,” analyst Ken Smith wrote in the newsletter. “Two months do not really create a trend, but it is certainly a start.”

November shipments were 1% below November 2008, but the order backlog among those surveyed was 7% ahead of the previous November.

For the first 11 months of 2009, new orders were 14% below the first 11 months of 2008, and shipments were 17% below the prior year.

“While there are still many companies out there that are really hurting, it seems that most companies have made adjustments to current volume levels,” Smith wrote.