A blizzard of trouble

New York— Adam Levine, vice president of Basics Furniture on Seventh Avenue here, believed nothing could keep New Yorkers in their cramped apartments for very long.

The blizzard of Presidents' Day weekend "proved me wrong," he said.

With roughly two feet of snow on

Across the Northeast and into Virginia, furniture retailers were forced to close stores during the three-day holiday weekend, wiping out sales and hopes of a turnaround in what's starting out as another sluggish year for many in the industry.

On the positive side, there were no reports of physical damage, and many stores are moving quickly with aggressive follow-up promotions, hoping to win back some of the lost business.

Just how much business furniture stores lost is not known. However, overall retail sales in the Northeast sunk by nearly $422 million from last year's Presidents' Day weekend, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based analyst of retail sales and consumer traffic.

On Monday, Breuners Home Furnishings Corp. shut down 38 Huffman Koos and Good's Furniture stores thanks to some 27 inches of snow covering its Philadelphia, New York and Connecticut markets.

"Saturday was OK. Sunday was fair, but Monday was wiped out," said Joe Reddington, chief executive officer of the Lancaster, Pa.-based Top 100 company. BHFC's 10 Breuners stores on the West Coast remained open.

Reddington estimated the storm cost BHFC more than $3 million in sales. The retailer is stepping up some of its electronic advertising where it can, "but there's not a lot you can do when you're into the week," he said. "It's not the way you would like to start off February."

Wood-Armfield President Phil Kennett called the winter storm "a killer" because it fell on the typically robust holiday, forcing the company to close its Gallahan's store in Fredericksburg, Va., for two days. Its Wood-Armfield store in High Point remained open but was handicapped by a thick layer of ice that kept consumers home there too.

Like others, Kennett said his company will continue fighting back this month, with its ongoing "Fabulous February" promotion now spiced up with a short-term offer of an additional 5% off on leather and fabric upholstery.

The upscale Mastercraft Interiors of Beltsville, Md., closed its five Maryland and Virginia stores on both Sunday and Monday of the holiday weekend, and deliveries were called off for the following two days because snow continued to clog many neighborhoods.

On the Tuesday after Presidents' Day, some Mastercraft employees still were struggling to make it into work, said Carolyn Gomez, vice president of merchandising, who was among those stranded at home.

For the holiday, Mastercraft used a promotion that had proved very successful in the past — additional discounts off selected goods with a coupon from its newspaper ad. Business was off to a strong start Friday and even Saturday, despite accumulating snow, Gomez said. Consumers visiting the stores probably realized it would be difficult to get out later in the weekend.

"It's just unfortunate that we lost the other two (days)," she said. "Traditionally, Monday is the best day of the weekend. I'd say we probably lost 80% of the weekend because of that."

Mastercraft is extending its promotion, "but when you lose a weekend like that, it's really hard to make it up," Gomez said.

That won't stop many retailers from trying. The Room Store, which closed 21 Virginia and Maryland stores part of Saturday and all day Sunday and Monday, is gearing up for additional promoting, said Curtis Kimbrell, president of the Richmond, Va.-based company.

"We're holding over the Presidents' Day sale and juicing it up a little bit to try to get customers back in," he said.

The company ran a no-interest, no-payment, no-down-payment until June 2004 promotion with "bonus dollars" savings off of certain-sized purchases for preferred customers. It has now extended the bonus dollars offer to all consumers.

"In the past, it's been very difficult to recover lost business," Kimbrell said. "We're going to be very aggressive this time and try to get it back. Hopefully, this time we'll break the trend."

The same goes for Raymour & Flanigan of Liverpool, N.Y., where the lights were out at 49 of its stores — or about 70% — from Philadelphia through New England.

On the following Tuesday, Raymour's creative team had jumped into high gear to put together a "Snow Emergency Sale" to help recapture the lost volume. "You'll find sales tags everywhere in the Northeast's largest furniture inventory," the TV spots said. "Unlike winter, it's over by 9 p.m. Monday."

Mark Manders, Raymour & Flanigan's vice president of marketing and public relations, said, "Our goal is to capture those dollars that would normally have flowed into the market, and capture more than our share by being quick out of the gate."

Unlike some stores, Raymour eschews newspapers for radio and TV ads, and was able to quickly cancel Presidents' Day spots.

Rowe's Storehouse chain also is looking to come back after it temporarily closed 23 stores in Washington/Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Delaware.

Storehouse President Caroline Hipple declined to estimate the impact on sales, saying it was too early to tell. "We'll get on the phone and try to recover it all," she said. "We have one thing in mind and that is to recoup these sales."

Mastercraft's Gomez is another with high hopes for a comeback: "We're keeping our fingers crossed that perhaps with the four days people spent inside their homes, they decided they needed a makeover — new furniture and possibly some interior design help."

Others are not as optimistic.

BHFC's Reddington said he hasn't seen anything to suggest that consumers are ready to buy furniture. "With the combination of terror alerts, the prospect of war and a negative stock market, you really don't have anything driving consumers to make purchases," he said.

And all that time spent inside during the storm probably didn't help, said Basics' Levine. "They're watching TV and they're hearing about a war," he said. "That's not motivating anybody to buy."