Smith Leonard Reports Residential Furniture Sales Increased 47% Year-Over-Year in May

Smith Leonard’s latest Monthly Furniture Insight survey of residential furniture manufacturers and distributors reported that May 2021 sales were 47% higher year-over-year. Overall, 91% of survey participants reported increased orders, with most reporting triple-digits increases. Year to date, new orders were up 67% over the first five months of 2020.

Going back to more normal times, Smith Leonard compared the new orders year to date for 2021 to that of 2019. That comparison showed that new orders were up approximately 36% over that period, the same as they reported last month for the April year to date results. So, these results really seem to show that business has been as good as it seems. Shipments in May 2021 were up 64% over May 2020, as companies continued to ramp back up and start to ship from backlogs. This increase brought the year-to-date results to an increase of 43%. The year-to-date results showed an increase of 17% over year-to-date 2019 results.

Backlogs continued to rise, up 214% over May 2020 results. Backlogs rose 3% from April. Most manufactures are showing delivery dates of about 3 months to as much as 6 months from what we have heard. Distributors are having the same issues as many of the Asian companies have been shut down or slowed due to COVID as well.