Sad News For North MS (Jackson, Madison: sales, house, buying)

[viverlibre]

Lane furniture ceases operations, thousands out of work. I hate timing like this!


https://www.wtva.com/news/united-fur...0c11e80ee.html

[Suesbal]

First, factories from the North moved to the South for cheaper, non-union. Now they move out of the country for even cheaper non-union labor.

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by Suesbal

First, factories from the North moved to the South for cheaper, non-union. Now they move out of the country for even cheaper non-union labor.

Nah. They didn't move. They went out of business.
Besides, companies move to Mississippi to escape unions. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not.

[JacksonPanther]

What do they mean "without Cobra?" Never heard of a layoff that I couldn't choose Cobra if I wanted to pay it. So sorry to anyone who happens to be ill right now, with benefits being terminated.

[GrandviewGloria]

I just did a Google image search. YECCCCCCCCCH! Who would want that garbage? My 'Cousin Crazy' (far from Mississippi), who's working at becoming a total Redneck (despite a debutante mother, a debutante stepmother, and growing up with three maids, as the daughter of her county's largest employer), has two giant reclining/vibrating puffychairs, which look about like Lane's upholstery line. She made me wallow in one of them (forget "sitting": 'Wallowing' is the only word which applies). It was a nightmarish experience. But she's overweight, has glaucoma, has the beginnings of Early-onset Dementia, believes the TV People who tell her that Keto is dangerous, and so will be dead, soon - buying NO furniture from ANYBODY. I presume that Lane's other customers are similarly dead or dying-off.

Her college-age son (IQ over 160), though, has nothing but Ikea, like his entire peer group. I'm not sure what Ikea is, and am allowed, by my Decorator, to imagine that it's like Fornacetti - maybe crossed with Marimekko ("Keep thinking that, Gloria. That will save your brain from imploding from the sheer nothingness of Ikea. It's like an aesthetic Black Hole"). But I suspect that Ikea also resembles Robsjohn-Gibbings' non-Grecian furniture designs from the Fab Fifties. We have his Grecian 'Klismos' line at the Meadow Lane house. My Decorator said the 'Ancient Greek Look' was appropriate for a house on a sandbar. And he's right. By frumpy Southampton standards, it's pretentious. By my standards, it's barely pretentious-enough.

Cousin Crazy's debutante mother, had the ugly Modern kind of teak/walnut Robsjohn-Gibbings, during the period when my violent uncle was finishing-her-off. (oddly, her Buttercup tea service, her big Barguzin Sable coat, and her Imperial Ghia, were all gifts from HIM, following moments when he'd landed her in the hospital) She had ugly Cezanne drawings on the walls, ugly Oatmeal slub silk Lawson sofas, and ugly Spanish wrought-iron lamps, with amber glass blown into the centers. Maybe this is why my mom (who babysat there, as an adolescent, for a week or so, in '59) dreamed of landing a rich long-haul trucker, and having a used doublewide, with amber swag lamps. So, the son's taste for Ikea, may stem from a genetic defect.

I gave Cousin Crazy a nine-strand torsade necklace of palest Peach pearls. "It's too heeeeeeeeavyyyyyy". Even the single big golden pearl, suspended from a twist of tiny gold chains, is too heavy. How feeble must one be? In my head, this is the kind of person who would have bought Lane: physically-unfit, neurotic, self-destructive, anti-ambitious (rather than merely unambitious),vulnerable to influence from Pop Culture. She had a bunch of fine family pieces, including a Mallard Bed, and a Louis XIV chandelier identical to one in Jackson's iconic 'Castle Crest' mansion, which she gave away, before inhabiting her newest house. She's filled the place with nondescript garbage from "Ashley".

Is Ashley a subsidiary of Lane? It comes up, when I google 'Lane'. Madison's Mayor Mary (an astute judge of many things, including what the public wants and aspires to) warned the Miskelly Brothers, that an Ashley store would not fly, in Madison County. She was right. Sales were pitiful. Chip, I'm told, during the RE-dedication of the former Ashley store (gorgeous building, sheathed in real limestone), as a Miskelly's (a finer mix, with more emphasis on style and beauty), actually said something like, "We should have listened to Mayor Mary. She was right!" Of course she was. She generally is.

Can it be, that Mayor Mary's prediction was applicable to the Ashey/Lane market as-a-whole, and not just to Madison County? She has an uncanny knack for spotting and predicting trends - many of them with worldwide significance.

[Listener2307]

Gloria, we learned long ago that you cannot go broke underestimating the taste of the American public. It seems they will buy ANY dang thing.
Years ago I made a sales call on a company that made custom trailers for NASCAR. We talking faux tiger skin and faux leather and red velvet!
When I was making the sales pitch for the zebra skin, I leaned over and told her this stuff was so convincing that I once found a tick on it! We laughed and whooped it up and she ordered it.
At least Lane used to buy real leather from us.

[Suesbal]

Immigrant Morris Futorian was the father of northeast Mississippi’s furniture industry.

https://www.homefurnishingshalloffam...orris-futorian


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rofSA6AAb4

[Veritas Vincit]

Lane Furniture was owned by United Furniture Industries. Ashley Furniture is not related to them. They almost certainly went out of business because they took a gamble on investing a ton when furniture demand was up without anticipating the decline in demand as a result of the economic contraction. It happens in business.

[PhinneyWalker]

Originally Posted by Suesbal

First, factories from the North moved to the South for cheaper, non-union. Now they move out of the country for even cheaper non-union labor.

Yep, that pretty well sums up the situation alright. Sad....

[golden eagles fan]

Originally Posted by JacksonPanther

What do they mean "without Cobra?" Never heard of a layoff that I couldn't choose Cobra if I wanted to pay it. So sorry to anyone who happens to be ill right now, with benefits being terminated.

Having Cobra costs just as much, if not more, than my car note.