by HIGH POINT — During its 2024 Compliance Summit held this past week, the American Home Furnishings Alliance provided updates for the first annual Furniture Safety Week planned for Oct. 7-11.
At the Summit, AHFA Vice President of Communications Pat Bowling outlined key aspects of the event, which aims to communicate about the safety issues involving furniture that include tip-over, recliner safety, risks associated with bunk beds as well as glass-top tables.
Noting that this is not an in-person event, Bowling said that key industry stakeholders and advisers have been working on a coordinated effort to develop details for the event.
“This is an information campaign that is designed to engage all segments of our industry in the communication of safety messages to consumers,” Bowling said. “We want to elevate those messages on our retail websites and our manufacturer websites so that more consumers are engaged with the steps needed to make their homes safe.”
While furniture tip-over will be a key element of the conversation, Bowling noted that other categories also will be part of the discussion. This includes recliners, which were involved in eight child fatalities between 2011 and 2022; bunk beds, which are linked to 36,000 child injuries each year; and glass-top tables which are also associated with many injuries each year.
In addition to a new safety standard planned for recliners aimed at preventing accidents involving the foot rest, Bowling added, “Bunk bed safety has been on our radar for decades, but there are still accidents and deaths involving bunk beds every year. Another one that sort of flies under the radar are glass-top tables and desks — there are thousands of injuries every year involving both children and adults with glass-top furniture that perhaps does not have tempered tops.”
Another key element of the initiative will be to continue the industry’s dialogue with parent groups and child safety advocates that was critical in developing the core elements of the STURDY (Stop Tip-Overs of Unsafe Dressers on Youth) Act, passed into law in late 2022.
“The collaboration really helped advance STURDY and accomplish what we needed to accomplish with that standard,” Bowling said, adding that the AHFA doesn’t want to restart its dialogue from square one with those groups when an evaluation of STURDY takes place in several years. “We don’t want those relationships to go by the wayside.”
“So this is really a way for us to continue working with them, continue having discussions, making sure they understand our objectives, making sure that they know we are being proactive in communicating these safety messages to consumers and involving them in the process.”
Some key child safety groups are already involved in the process including Parents Against Tipovers, which Bowling said has already provided input regarding some of the campaign’s consumer-facing materials. Kids In Danger also has signed on as a collaborator for the event as have the Home Furnishings Association, Furniture 1st and Furnituredealer.net, to name several.
While a large focus is on getting retailers and manufacturers to participate in educational elements geared towards consumers, Bowling added that AHFA is looking for further participation from e-commerce players, designers and influencers.
“Designers and influencers are a category that have been completely left out of this discussion and are not communicating to their audiences and their 10s of thousands of followers that safety is an issue in home furnishings,” she said. “So we have an opportunity with this initiative to cast the net wider and get more folks involved.”
Information about the event can be found on the AHFA’s sister website, www.alliance4safety.org, which also served as a landing page for a tip restraint recall announced earlier this year.
“Consumers are already becoming familiar with it as a place for furniture safety information, and we’re going to build on that,” Bowling said.
In addition to basic information about the event, the site has information about how visitors can get involved along with ideas on what they can do in their stores or within their respective organizations to promote the event and furniture safety in general. The site also has materials such as a downloadable logo and information on how to develop collateral material about the event including social media and customizable press releases, for example.
