February furniture orders 13% higher than 2009

New residential furniture orders were 13 percent higher in February 2010 than 2009, according to Smith Leonard’s Furniture Insights, a monthly survey of residential furniture manufacturers and distributors.
This marked the fourth month in a row that orders were up over the previous year’s same month comparison. (October was flat, November up 10 percent, December up 12 percent and January up 4 percent.) Admittedly, all of these months were comparing to poor results in the previous year. But the good news is that we seem to have stopped the downward flow.
Shipments in February were 4 percent higher than February 2009. January shipments were 6 percent higher than January 2009, resulting in the year-to-date shipments up 5 percent over the same two months of last year. This was the third month in a row that shipments were up over the same period a year ago.