January 9, 2020

Cambodia to Convert U.S. Wood to Furniture

A shortage of workers in Vietnam – a huge beneficiary of the U.S. trade war with China – is getting severe enough that some furniture makers are now scouting Cambodia and Bangladesh for factories, according to one industry chief executive.

Labor rates in Vietnam are rising and workers are getting increasingly scarce, said Clarence Smith, CEO of Haverty Furniture Cos., which uses Asian factories to make its company-branded products.

And even though Asian suppliers continue to source much of the timber they use from the Appalachian region of the U.S., the manufacturing of wood furniture “is not coming back to the United States,” Smith said in an interview.

Bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. was one of the Trump administration’s stated goals in imposing tariffs on Chinese-made goods.

The Atlanta-based furniture retailer wrestled with supply chain disruptions last year as the manufacturers it buys from fled China and set up operations in Vietnam. Some suppliers stopped making Haverty’s top-selling merchandise, forcing it to find new sources in Vietnam on the fly and causing shortages of some items at its roughly 120 U.S. showrooms.

For now, most of the disruptions are behind them even if the first phase of the U.S.-China trade deal will keep the 25% tariffs on Chinese-made furniture in place, Smith said. Haverty still imports leather and upholstered pieces from China, although it no longer gets any wood furniture from the country.

The factory relocations aren’t going to end, he said: “They’re already building plants in Cambodia. It’s moving just like it’s always moved.”

Smith compared the shift from China to Vietnam and into other developing Asian countries to U.S. furniture industry’s shift to North Carolina from Michigan a century ago. The upholstered furniture industry has seen a recent resurgence in North Carolina, but Smith said it’s far cheaper for Asian factories to make wood furniture from logs harvested in the Carolinas than for companies to manufacture the same products in the U.S.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/U-S-Furniture-Industry-Eyes-Cambodia-as-14959057.php

January 9, 2020

MLily USA Expands in SC

First U.S. facility: MLily USA opens mattress factory in S.C.

David Perry // Executive Editor, Furniture Today • January 6, 2020

Ty Davenport, left, director of Fairfield County Economic Development; Chad Reinsel, MLily USA; Mayor Roger Gaddy, Winnsboro, S.C.; Annie McDaniel, S.C. representative; Mike Fanning, S.C. senator; James Ni, Healthcare Co.; Bobby Hitt, S.C. Secretary of Commerce; Cornelius Robinson, chairman of Fairfield County Council; Stephen Chen and Suns Jian, both of MLily USA.

WINNSBORO, S.C. — Fast-growing MLily USA recently opened its first U.S.-based mattress manufacturing facility here, preparing to serve customers in the North America market.

The company, a unit of China-based Healthcare Co., spent about $48 million to open and equip the new factory in Fairfield County, just north of the state capital of Columbia.

More than 200 state and local officials and bedding suppliers and executives were on hand for the grand-opening celebration, which featured comments by James Ni, the chairman and CEO of Healthcare.

“James always saw a huge opportunity in the U.S.,” said Stephen Chen, president of MLily USA. “That vision has come true today.”

Ni said the U.S. government’s antidumping duties on Chinese bedding producers have hurt MLily’s business but said the new mattress factory here gives his company renewed growth prospects.

Read more here: https://www.furnituretoday.com/bedding-manufacturers/first-u-s-facility-mlily-usa-opens-mattress-factory-in-s-c/