Paul and Suzanne Newington sat on lawn chairs in their living room for much of the past winter, waiting for their new furniture to arrive.

They are among a number of disgruntled customers of the London outlet of Furniture Direct who — through chain e-mails that are sweeping through the city — are venting their frustration about slow deliveries and poor service.

Stan and Ella West, owners of the Furniture Direct chain, admit there have been delivery problems in recent months which they say are being corrected.

But Stan West says the store is being hurt by the most common e-mail making the rounds that says a complaining customer was physically threatened by store staff. Read more »

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded National Business Furniture, LLC (NBF) a contract to provide Office Furniture to U.S. Government agencies. The new contract (#GS-28F-0007T) covers hundreds of office furniture products including desks, chairs, reception furniture, file cabinets and more, making it simple to select GSA approved products from multiple manufacturers under a single purchase order.

NBF has been providing office furniture to government customers since 1975 via monthly catalogs and their website, NBF.com. The new contract now provides specified GSA discounts and fast shipment to federal customers on a variety of office furniture. To make it easy to shop, NBF’s catalog will include the GSA logo to indicate which items are approved. Plus, NBF.com includes a “GSA Approved” area showing all furniture items that are approved for purchase. Customers can easily find relevant product information such as available colors and additional images; then call NBF’s GSA specialists at 800-558-1010 to place an order and get GSA pricing. Federal customers can purchase GSA and non-GSA items all under a single purchase order. The GSA SmartPay credit card is accepted for added convenience. Read more »

Medium to high-end casegoods manufacturer Leda Furniture has recently has launched its new web site at www.ledafurniture.com.

The site offers a catalog browsing experience that can enhance and better inform a consumer before they visit one of Leda’s retailer partners. The company had been running a soft launch in order to see how the site was accepted and made necessary updates before officially announcing the site.

Consumers have access to product details and the ability to specify cross-category collections, and highlight multiple finish options. There’s also a function that allows consumers to contact the company to find their nearest dealer. Read more »

Known by many within the home furnishings and textile world, Rowe Furniture Senior Design Consultant Howard Niederman is retiring after 28 years. Neiderman helped to pioneer Rowe’s signature special order fabric program which revolutionized customization choices in the furniture industry.

For more than a quarter century, Niederman has developed designs for Rowe Furniture, taking a lead role in the styling and manufacturing of Rowe’s products. He also planned and developed designs for key accounts. Rowe President and CEO Stefanie Lucas said, “Howard was instrumental in helping Rowe develop into the style leader it is today. We would not be who we are today without the many years of Howard’s expertise and input into our product direction.” Read more »

People in the UK are furnishing their homes at a greater cost each year, new research from Halifax Credit Cards has shown.

According to the figures Britons spent a total of £13.5 billion on furniture in 2005, equating to an average of £531.50 per household.Overall the public spending on furniture and furnishings has increased by 86 per cent over the last ten years.”When it comes to furnishings, we all love filling our homes with creature comforts,” said Ken Stannard, head of Halifax Credit Cards.Given this increased spending it is important to make sure that home furniture is properly looked after, the Halifax report also states.Top tips include making sure leather upholstery is kept out of direct or strong sunlight, regularly using fabric protectors and upholstery shampoo on settees and making sure wooden table tops are preserved through the use of heat and waterproof mats. A recent price hike in furniture was recently identified by the Guardian, with retailers reportedly raising prices last month ahead of special offers during the April Easter weekend.People looking at practical ways to furnish their homes while also saving space may find self storage a useful addition to any room.

Information from: www.safestore.co.uk

The Furniture Foundation announced that it has allocated $134,000 for scholarships, education and research at four colleges and universities for the 2007-2008 school year.

Recipients include Appalachian State University, Mississippi State University, North Carolina State University and Lenoir-Rhyne College.

Appalachian State’s grant will provide scholarship funds to be awarded to students enrolled in the school’s Furniture Industry Studies program. The grant to Mississippi State University will support the Institute for Furniture Manufacturing and Management, while the allocation for North Carolina State University will support the Furniture Manufacturing and Management Center. Read more »

HNI Corp., which makes office furniture and fireplaces, said on Thursday quarterly profit fell 27 percent, hurt by softness in office furniture orders.

First-quarter earnings fell to $20.7 million, or 43 cents per share, from $28.5 million, or 55 cents a share, a year earlier.

Analysts had forecast earnings of 45 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates. Read more »

Iowa Office furniture and fireplace manufacturer H-N-I Corporation paid its chairman, president and C-E-O two-point-six million dollars in 2006. That’s according to a regulatory statement filed today.
The compensation for Stan A. Askren included a salary of 704-thousand-and-250 dollars and 616-thousand-and-32 dollars in non-equity incentive plan compensation. That’s a reward for the company’s performance.

Askren’s share of the company’s profit sharing plan was ten-thousand-538 dollars. He was also paid 239-thousand-98 dollars in other compensation.

Muscatine-based H-N-I Corporation is one of the world’s largest office furniture manufacturers. It’s also the leading manufacturer of gas-and wood-burning fireplaces in the United States. Read more »

The exquisite steel cupboards, cabinets, racks and lockers decorate the houses and the offices. The steel furniture that is arranged in rows in his shop are in different colours and designs. These are the results of the hard work of the Managing Director, Alsan Steel Fabrication, Anton Perera.

After working in many factories he started off his own business. “I gathered knowledge about steel and steel furniture. Then I thought of starting my own business and I put up my factory. I started this business in a small way. At present it has developed and is famous among customers,” Perera said.

He manufactures steel cupboards, closets and various types of racks. “We manufacture high quality steel furniture and steel fabricating machines. These are manufactured for office and household purposes,” he said. Read more »

It may have been an overexposure to early Frank Lloyd Wright, or perhaps too much time spent in boats, but when I was young, and until very recently, I was horrified by furniture. I always thought that a perfect domestic architecture would be heavy on the built-ins. Shelves, benches, various seats and berths—these were the things necessary to finish a space, to tune it for living, to show at least that the designer was not entirely ignorant of how and by whom a house would be used. Also to anchor it. An uncle of mine lived for many years in a very cool Anglo-built adobe in Taos, New Mexico. At the center of the main space was a large circular pit, dug out of the ground and contoured for sitting: a brutal sunken living room, it seemed so much more profound than the loose, impermanent wooden furniture orbiting all around it, sliding this way and that, imported things ready to take up any position, or be replaced.

This aversion grew worse. I found myself unable to endorse almost any purchase made by my parents for my childhood home—not because of taste (theirs is good) but because the new furniture, made far away and trucked in, always seemed somehow irreparably unfitting, and this in the kind of light-suffused, only lightly wainscoted Victorian interior that can generally support any style in style. But new furniture would just squat there. Some would engage in silent battle with previous purchases that had not yet been ­assimilated—the 1970s laminate dining-room table at war with its black steel 1990s chairs, say, or the new bookshelf glowering at the old. Read more »