HIGH POINT – With less showroom traffic than the past two High Point Markets, high-end domestic furniture manufacturer Copeland wouldn’t call this week’s market a success, per se. But still, company executives were feeling great.
Copeland’s main launch this year was Butterfly, a high-design dining group in solid black walnut.
“We probably had our best-receiving dining introduction since 2009,” said Director Ben Copeland said. “The design is loved. It’s easy to make wood in straight lines. It’s harder to make it flow and curve and shape it organically. We’re able to do it thanks to the advanced CNC machinery we’ve been investing in. We feel great about Butterfly.”
One reason for reduced attendance, Copeland said, was the Milan Furniture Fair being held at nearly the same time.
“We operate at a contemporary, high-design bandwidth, and many of those buyers want to go to Milan,” he said, noting most of his buyers are smaller. “Also, at least for what we see, people are only committing to one market per year, and that’s October.”
Other than dining, Copeland made some tweaks to its wood-focused upholstery group, Sierra, launched last fall. One change was increasing the line’s seat depth. The company didn’t introduce any new bedroom.
“Bedroom is hit hardest when times are tough,” he said. “Dining is sort of in the middle ranks, with mattresses and living room leading in downturns.”
Copeland commented on the state of business: “Retailers are still backed up on inventory, but it’s not hindering new placements,” he said. “And even though business is tough, we do see some of our buyers expanding with new stores.”
Copeland wouldn’t call himself optimistic in the traditional sense, but he was feeling good considering the health of the economy.
“I’m happy that we are currently even on sales with last year,” he said. “I have hope the Fed will lower interest rates; 5% is the magic number I’m hearing.”
He said the company’s plans for the year are to keep on churning out product.
“The extreme business over COVID and then the whole STURDY Act thing reduced our capacity for product over the past few years. Now that all that’s over, we are getting back to being aggressive on new product.”