Good afternoon,

 

It was great to see everyone this past week in High Point in our Norwalk showroom. Many of you participated in our seminars, took part in our Intiaro vodka tasting and from the initial looks of the orders, many of you needed upholstery to fill floors. For all of this, I thank you. 

 

Our industry continues to thrive even with the shortages of raw materials, labor, and transportation. Since our last price increase on June 22nd, we have seen double-digit increases from many of our outside vendors including springs, reclining mechanisms, foam, and plywood. For these reasons, we will have a line-wide increase of 5% effective November 23rd. Based on macro-economic projections, we anticipate these raw material price increases will continue over the next few quarters. We are committed to taking as small of an increase as we can to help you absorb these price increases at the retail level, but we do need to let you know what we are anticipating. New price lists will be online next week for download in the Customer Center.

 

We continue to see delays in our specialty cores and backs from our third-party vendors. This past month we have been able to add an additional vendor to help relieve some pressure, but they are still behind in labor. Even with all these delays, the demand for specialty cores continues to rise. In the last year, we have seen a 40% increase in specialty core orders. With this increase and delays, we are adding an additional 2 weeks for specialty cores extending them out to 30 weeks. We know this affects not only the new orders but the ones currently in the system. Over the last few months with these delays, many of you have converted orders to our in-house produced ultra cores. This has helped speed up production and we have been able to keep orders with ultra core cushions on or around 18 weeks.

 

In an effort to reverse the trend, we are continuing to increase production units on a daily basis, including hiring and training additional employees, and working toward building our own specialty core construction in-house.

 

We know this has been a challenging year. We appreciate your business and your support as this ever changing world continues to turn.

Scot Kanaly

Norwalk Furniture, VP Sales

419-744-3391