Over the past few years, the furniture industry has lost Circle Furniture and Valley City Furniture, and seen Art Van Furniture and Weir’s close their doors.
It has been an unprecedented period of long-lived brands shutting down, but Furniture Today Editor Emeritus Ray Allegrezza pushes back at the narrative that’s supposed to explain why so many furniture stores and chains have closed.
“The explanation offered is almost always the same. Housing is down. Tariffs are up. Inflation is squeezing consumers. Costs – from fuel to freight – remain elevated,” he wrote. “All of that is true, but it is also incomplete. Because at the very same time, other furniture retailers are not shrinking; they are expanding into the very spaces left behind.”…