by Despite the threat of tariffs, consumers appeared eager to take advantage of sales offering big savings across categories
HIGH POINT — A number of retailers around the country that Home News Now interviewed just after Memorial Day reported mixed, but mostly positive, sales and traffic over the holiday weekend, delivering a further boost to the industry during a period of economic uncertainty largely caused by Trump tariffs.
While most retailers interviewed for this story declined to give specific year-over-year changes in sales, they described increases and decreases as moderate in nature. When combined with other yet-to-be reported increases in different markets, this potentially puts the industry on track to continue the overall year-over-year gains it has seen each month since September.
While it saw a small decline in holiday weekend sales compared to last year, retailer Hoot Judkins said that May sales have been strong overall, putting the company up year to date.
“We have definitely seen increases across the board over the course of the entire month of May,” said Bobby Watson, president, chief executive officer and co-owner in the business, which has a 60,000-square-foot store in the San Francisco region.
He noted that the company also saw strong across-the-board sales for different categories over the holiday weekend.
To drive business, the store offered similar promotions as it did last year, although some of its suppliers offered expanded discounts and specials they didn’t offer at the time.
“Which we just turned around and passed the savings to the customer,” Watson said, noting that while it is hard to gauge the impact inflation may have had on the overall savings, “there were some incentives from the factories that made the discounts a little higher on some of the products we carried.”
Irv Blumkin, chairman of Omaha-based Nebraska Furniture Mart, said that sales were up overall compared with last year. While he said the retailer was a little concerned heading into the holiday weekend because of tariffs and related industry disruption, the holiday weekend brought people through the doors in typical holiday weekend fashion. Thus, he was pleased with the overall results.
“It is pretty much a holiday event. We offer some extraordinary values, and it was very successful across all categories,” he said, of the company’s different product segments, including furniture, flooring, appliances and electronics. However, he said that furniture sales outpaced the other parts of the business.
Combined with Memorial Day weekend sales activity, Blumkin said that the company is doing well so far this year.
“We are positive year to date,” he said.
Gorman’s Home Furnishings & Interior Design in the Detroit metro area said as its business is generally more designer-driven, it usually doesn’t run a typical Memorial Day sales event.
However, over the holiday weekend, it passed along significant promotional discounts from some of its major manufacturing partners such as Lexington, Stickley and Sherrill upholstery that were as much as 40% to 50% off retail pricing.
Those discounts resonated with consumers, noted Marketing Director Melissa Smith, adding that this helped drive traffic and sales.
“This seems to be what is connecting with people,” she said of the opportunities for savings in what is considered a largely turbulent environment for the industry right now. “It was a good weekend for us and one of the better ones for us in terms of traffic. We were pleased overall.”
Others also said the holiday weekend went well as they promoted heavily to get people through the doors. This included a mix of TV and radio advertising as well as social media and other digital marketing on company websites that touted page after page of deals throughout their stores were a key marketing tool.
“We did a lot of short product and promotional videos for our social channels, and we do a little bit via connected TV such as Hulu and YouTube TV,” said David Horvath, category manager for furniture at Queen City Homestore, which has nine locations open currently, including several former Badcock stores whose leases the retailer took over out of bankruptcy. “But we also still hang our hat pretty heavily on television advertising, and I can tell you that the stores I was in this weekend I had several people tell me ‘I saw your ad on TV last night and I thought I would check you guys out.’”
He said that a lot of customers came in for appliances, which has been the retailer’s core category. But Horvath said he also got to show customers through its furniture section, “and they were pleasantly surprised. It is good to see that advertising still works. You are always concerned when a good amount of cost goes into that, especially for these events. We want to see a good return, and we are happy to say that we saw a good return for it. … I have to tell you it went really well. Traffic was better than we thought it would be, and performance was well above what we thought it would be.”
Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based City Furniture also reported a strong holiday weekend where traffic was driven partly by the company’s strong digital presence.
“Because people are shopping initially online more and more, it is the quality of the website that is the real front door,” company Chairman Keith Koenig told Home News Now. “If you give them good content online, you give them more of what they need to then come in the store more prepared and more knowledgeable. And we should close a higher percentage of those customers. Which has all happened.”
While Koenig did not offer specific figures or percentage increases on traffic or sales, he said he was pleased with the holiday weekend overall.
“Memorial Day looks like it was good across the country, and we had a good Memorial Day,” he said, noting that while traffic was ‘not fabulous,’ the people that came in were shopping. “We were up and our comps were up. And I think we were really executing well, so I am proud of our team. … We were very pleased. We beat our plan and we beat our budget, so it was a good weekend.”
David Ratcliffe, chief executive officer of The Old Cannery Furniture & Mattress Warehouse in Sumner, Washington, said that while sales were down slightly from last year, the company drew a lot of people for its Memorial Day sales event. In a traditional holiday weekend tradition that has spanned some 20 years, it gave out free hot dogs and soda to those who dropped by, serving some 7,200 hot dogs in three days.
“We have become a very community-oriented event for the city and nearby communities,” he said, adding that he believes the upholstery was among the top performers based on a strong offering from Stanton Sofas and other vendors in stationary and motion.
With some price increases that are now being passed along because of tariffs, retailers also kept their ear to whether consumers have been skittish about the idea of paying more.
Watson, of Hoot Judkins, noted that tariffs have not been a big issue of late as all of its upholstery is sourced from North America, including the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Roughly 85% of its case goods are made in the U.S., although it does source some wood furniture from Vietnam, Malaysia and India.
“Because we are primarily domestically sourced, tariffs are not going to have a huge impact on us,” Watson said. “I don’t expect zero impact — even domestic suppliers import parts. But I don’t think that was a motivating factor for people to come in and make a purchase, to be honest with you.”
Ratcliffe, of The Old Cannery, noted that customers did not seem to be reacting to tariffs at least on its wood product, some of which is produced in Vietnam.
(Note: Discussions with retailers about tariffs occurred before it was revealed this week that the U.S. Court of International Trade has handed down a ruling that aims to halt tariffs. An appeals court has since reinstated the tariffs pending further court review.)
Others also said the issue came up more to educate consumers on the benefits of buying sooner versus later. At Queen City Homestore, for example, the issue has been top of mind in the appliance segment which uses steel, a component that has faced tariffs as high as 25% from around the world.
But the retailer said it is doing its part to limit the impact on consumers.
“From a cost standpoint, we are going to try to hold our retails as much as we can,” said Horvath, of Queen City Homestore. “On the furniture side, we are the new guy on the block. The big boys can afford to move a couple of things up, but we are new so we want to remain a value-oriented organization.”
David Koehler, chairman of Laurel, Delaware-based Johnny Janosik World of Furniture & Mattresses, said that he doesn’t believe that customers coming in the stores of late have asked much about the issue. But he said he believes it has had an impact on overall consumer sentiment, as reflected in recent Consumer Confidence surveys.
“In some cases there may be some people that were out and tried to rush ahead of the tariffs, but I think for the most part, people just said, ‘Whoa, I am going to hunker down and see what happens here.’”
That said, he was pleased with Memorial Day business, noting that sales were up slightly overall compared with last year. While he noted that case goods are still struggling, motion upholstery remains strong with sales in the category continuing “to be the primary driver of business right now.”
“Memorial Day was good,” he said, adding that key weeks heading into and following the holiday weekend have not been as good as they’ve been previously. “But the weekend itself was good. Traffic, I think, is difficult to come by, but the people that are coming in are definitely buyers, and the average ticket and closing rates were up. So we were pleased with the weekend and hope that we get these tariffs behind us so we can focus on where we need to be going forward.”
Up to this point, consumer sentiment has appeared to be tied directly to tariffs, driving confidence lower in recent months. The most recent survey, released this week, showed that while tariffs remain top of mind for consumers, they are more optimistic that future trade deals will support economic growth in the months ahead.
Still, uncertainty remains about how much consumers will actually spend given the potential for rising prices, including goods that have already faced a tariff prior to the CIT court decision this week.
“Consumer sentiment is so low right now because they are unsure of what is going to happen,” Koehler said. “I think the consumer that has some money potentially is spending it, but for the most part, I think people are hunkering down and trying not to spend more than they need to.”
Housing is another area retailers continue to watch, particularly pockets of growth in the communities or regions they serve. That includes Hoot Judkins, based in the San Francisco Bay region.
“The housing market in the San Francisco area has always been very strong,” said Watson, co-owner. “It is ridiculously expensive, but there always seems to be demand. It does always go up and down slightly, but I don’t think it has the kind of swings that you would see in other parts of the country.”
He added that with little new land to develop in the region, some of the growth has come from the conversion of former retail strip shopping centers into multipurpose, high-density housing.
“But generally speaking, we don’t see that kind of growth,” he added of a residential real estate environment that depends more on existing home sales. “I think our business also tends to be more tied to jobs here in the Bay area, especially in high tech because this is a high-tech community. And I think people in the Bay also are very sensitive to what the stock market is doing. So those are the kind of indicators that play into it.”
Keith Koenig, of City Furniture, said that recent spikes in mortgage rates likely won’t help with housing. Still, the retailer is bullish on its growth prospects as it continues to open new stores in the Tampa metro region, already home to two larger stores in the market that each are around 160,000 square feet.
Its latest in the market will be a new 120,000-square-foot store opening in mid-June in Sarasota, its third location in the greater Tampa market. It also has another 120,000-square-foot location planned in the market in Wesley Chapel, which begins construction soon.
