After falling 5% in July, new orders for furniture were back up 6% in August compared with the prior-year month.

That’s according to the latest Furniture Insights survey of residential furniture manufacturers and distributors from High Point accounting and consulting firm Smith Leonard, which attributed the surprising bounce to perhaps timing issues between the two months for orders.

Year-to-date, new orders were up 1% over the first eight months of 2015. Only 44% of the participants reported increased orders over last year. In 2015, new orders were up 5% over the first eight months of 2014.

August shipments rose 6% over August 2015, following a 9% decrease reported in July, bringing year-to-date shipments back to about even with the same period a year ago. Only 42% of the participants reported increased shipments year-to-date.

Backlogs fell 2% from July and were also 2% lower than August 2015. August 2015 backlogs were 5% higher than August 2014 levels.

Receivable levels remained in good shape, down 4% from a year ago.

“Considering shipments year-to-date are flat, the decrease in receivables indicates they are in good shape,” Smith Leonard Partner Ken Smith said in the report. “Inventories also appear to be at good levels, down 1% from last year and down 1% from July.”

Factory and warehouse payrolls rose 1% over last year-to-date. The number of factory and warehouse employees was also up 1% over last year, very much in line with current business conditions.

In summary, Smith noted that while most indicators are good for the industry and the stock market is performing reasonably well, consumer confidence remains a problem for the industry.

“We talked to quite a number of people at the High Point Market, and most agreed that the negative political campaigns are the main cause for lack of confidence,” Smith noted. “In addition, at many places, there is little advertising space available, and any time available away from politics is extremely expensive. But most of the folks we talked with seemed to agree that while business is not great, it is not at all bad either. It just isn’t consistent.”

He called the recent High Point Market “interesting.”

“Friday and Saturday most of our talks indicated that ‘the big guys’ were all here Wednesday to Saturday,” Smith said. “But by Saturday night, we were not feeling much of a buzz. Then Sunday came, and it was like someone flipped a switch. Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday seemed to have a great feeling with seemingly really good traffic, and the mood really picked up.

“Overall, we thought the market was a good one. As best we could figure, it was like people realized the elections would be over soon, all the negative ads would go away, and we would get back to business. So it appeared that buyers figured they need to be ready with fresh new product.”

(Source: furnituretoday.com)