Hooker Furnishings Stock

Hooker Furnishings Corporation operates as a designer, marketer, and importer of casegoods (wooden and metal furniture), leather furniture, fabric-upholstered furniture and outdoor furniture for the residential, hospitality and contract markets. The company also domestically manufactures premium residential custom leather, custom fabric-upholstered furniture and outdoor furniture.

Segments and Products

The company operates through three reportable segments: Hooker Branded, Home Meridian, and Domestic Upholstery. The company’s other businesses are aggregated into ‘All Other’.

The company’s product lines cover the design spectrum of residential furniture: traditional, contemporary and transitional. Further, the company’s product lines are in the ‘good’, ‘better’ and ‘best’ product categories, which carry medium and upper price points.

Hooker Branded

The Hooker Branded segment includes two businesses:

Hooker Casegoods, which covers a wide range of design categories and includes home entertainment, home office, accent, dining and bedroom furniture in the upper-medium price points sold under the Hooker Furniture brand; and

Hooker Upholstery, imported upholstered furniture targeted at the upper-medium price-range.

Home Meridian

The Home Meridian segment includes the following brands/marketing units:

Pulaski Furniture, casegoods covering the complete design spectrum in a wide range of bedroom, dining room, accent and display cabinets at medium price points;

Samuel Lawrence Furniture, value-conscious offerings in bedroom, dining room, home office and youth furnishings;

Prime Resources International, value-conscious imported leather motion upholstery;

Samuel Lawrence Hospitality, a designer and supplier of hotel furnishings targeted toward four and five-star hotels; and

Accentrics Home (‘ACH’), home furnishings centered around an eclectic mix of unique pieces and materials that focused on e-commerce customers. Due to low profitability, management decided to exit this channel at the end of fiscal 2023.

Domestic Upholstery

The Domestic Upholstery segment includes the following operations:

Bradington-Young, a seating specialist in upscale motion and stationary leather furniture;

HF Custom, a specialist in fashion forward custom upholstery offering a selection of chairs , sofas, sectionals, recliners and a variety of accent upholstery pieces;

Shenandoah Furniture, an upscale upholstered furniture business specializing in private label sectionals, modulars, sofas, chairs, ottomans, benches, beds and dining chairs in the upper-medium price points for lifestyle specialty retailers; and

Sunset West, a designer and manufacturer of comfortable, stylish and high-quality outdoor furniture.

All Other

All Other consisting of:

The H Contract product line which supplies upholstered seating and casegoods to upscale senior living and assisted living facilities through designers, design firms, industry dealers and distributors that service that market; and

Lifestyle Brands, a business started in 2019 targeted at the interior designer channel.

Sourcing

Imported Products

The company has sourced products from foreign manufacturers for over thirty years, predominantly from Asia. Imported casegoods and upholstered furniture together accounted for approximately 72% of the company’s net sales in fiscal 2023 (the year ended January 29, 2023).

Customers

The company’s home furnishings products are sold through a variety of retailers, including independent furniture stores, department stores, mass merchants, national chains, catalog merchants, interior designers, and e-commerce retailers. The company defines sales to international customers as sales to customers outside of the United States and Canada since the company’s independent domestic sales force services both countries.

Warehousing and Distribution

The company distributes furniture to retailers directly from factories and warehouses in Asia via the company’s container direct programs and from the company’s facilities in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and California, and in limited cases, from customer operated warehouses in strategic locations. Due to the company’s exit from the ACH business unit, which demanded significant amounts of inventory to meet the quick shipping requirements of its e-commerce model, the company anticipates a reduction in the physical footprint of the Georgia warehouse over the course of fiscal 2024.

Seasonality

Generally, sales in the company’s fiscal first quarter (year ended January 2023) are lower than the company’s other fiscal quarters due to the post-Lunar New Year shipping lag and sales in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter are generally stronger due to the pre-Lunar New Year surge in shipments from Asia.

Patents and Trademarks

The Hooker Furnishings, Hooker Furniture, Bradington-Young, Sam Moore, Pulaski Furniture, Samuel Lawrence Furniture, Samuel Lawrence Hospitality, Room Gear, Right2Home, Home Meridian International, Prime Resources International, Accentrics Home, HMidea, Shenandoah, H Contract, Homeware, MARQ and Sunset West trade names represent many years of continued business. The company also owns a number of patents and trademarks, both domestically and internationally, none of which is considered to be material.

History

Hooker Furniture Corporation was founded in 1924. The company was incorporated in Virginia in 1924.