The big yellow banners covering the windows of Roth's Furniture, 206 S. Market St., Elizabethtown, are a sign of the times.

"Emergency sell-off, nothing held back," they declare.

No, the 75-year-old company is not going out of business, as some people assume on seeing the signs, store employees say, but Roth's is in the process of drastically reducing its higher-end inventory.

Roth's is not alone. Owners of other Lancaster County furniture stores say the sagging housing market has really been putting a pinch on business.

"It's a horrific year for our industry," said Doug Wolf, president of Wolf Furniture, which has stores throughout south-central Pennsylvania and into Maryland, including one at 2040 Bennett Ave. in Lancaster.

Furniture sales usually rise and fall in concert with the real estate market because people tend to buy furniture when they move, said Wolf, who also serves on the executive committee of the National Home Furnishings Association, which issues an annual report on the industry.

"Last year was the worst year since 1987," Wolf said, "and I think I can tell you that most retailers and suppliers would like to have last year back right now."

John Blowers, general manager and co-owner of Olde Mill House Shoppes, 105 Strasburg Pike, would agree. He said he had just done an analysis of furniture sales from the end of September to the end of October in preparation for ordering new inventory.

"We are probably 50 percent of what we were last year," Blowers said. "It has dried up like a puddle on a warm summer day."

Still, neither Wolf nor Blowers indicate that their businesses' survival is threatened, and some other furniture retailers say their sales actually seem to be holding up pretty well.

Contrary views
"We had a good summer," said Jay Orsag, of Lancaster's Furniture To Go, 1273 Manheim Pike.

"This store lends itself to this type of economy," he said, citing its low-overhead, low-profit-margin approach.

Todd Lehman, president and owner of Interiors, 3130 Columbia Ave., said he's noticed that a number of people have started asking him lately how his business is doing.

"Not too badly. Not as badly as some of our industry counterparts," Lehman said. "Our sales are holding up well."

In fact, he said, so far this year customer visits are up over last year.

Lehman did say, however, that he's noticed a definite shift away from the more expensive bedroom and dining-room sets, while sofa sales have gone up.

"Clearly, consumers have shifted downward," he said. "Instead of buying a $1,500 sofa, they're buying an $800 sofa."

Lehman also noted that there's been some attrition in his competition over the past few months with the closing of Doneckers in Ephrata, Main Street Furniture in Lititz and Brandon Home Furnishings in Lancaster.

"We've got a significant number of our competitors going out of business," Wolf said, taking a more regional view.

"I don't think it's really bad now," Orsag said. "If it gets bad, it'll thin the flock out."

Still, there are distinct exceptions to the general trend.

"We happen to be the busiest we've ever been in the 17 years we've been in business," said Tom Rossman, owner of The Shaker Shoppe, 616 Owl Hill Road, Lititz, citing his particular niche market and a boom in Internet sales.

Rossman said people tend to equate the Shaker style furniture his company makes with quality, and they know its simple, elegant style will blend in with nearly any interior.

But even Rossman acknowledges that the story would be different were he relying on local sales rather than shipping orders to California, New Mexico and Massachusetts, as he did earlier this month.

"I'm just feeling very lucky right now," he said.

Making adjustments
Another furniture manufacturer who is holding his own through the downturn is John Martin, president of Martin Chair Co., 124 King Court, New Holland.

The 30 people his company employs manufacture and sell a full range of fine furniture, not just chairs.

"I work with a lot of small mom-and-pop shops, and a lot of them are hurting," he said.

So is Martin's own store. "From a retail standpoint, it hasn't been really good. Traffic is down," he said.

But one aspect of Martin's business is thriving — the contract work his company does to supply computer carousels and other furniture to such institutions as colleges and hospitals.

He said the company had just finished an order for Hospice of Lancaster County, and has had recent contracts with St. John's University in New York, Duke University in North Carolina, the University of Georgia and the Rancho Mirage Public Library in California.

Nor has Martin given up on the retail market.

The company had long specialized in 18th-century Windsor-style furniture, he said, but it recently added a prairie line reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's furniture designs. The new line has a contemporary look preferred by many younger buyers, he said.

Other furniture retailers say they've also taken steps they think will help them through the housing slowdown, including the opening of new stores.

Gish's Furniture, for instance, which specializes in higher-quality Amish- and Mennonite-crafted furniture, opened a new store last February at 2191 Lincoln Highway East.

Michael Gish, the company's president, said he saw a small downturn in sales in October at his York and Camp Hill stores, which has him concerned, but he's still happy he expanded to Lancaster this year.

"We were very pleased with sales in Lancaster, especially in an economy like now," he said.

The new store is close to the outlet malls, he explained, and has generated a lot of out-of-town sales.

"We've seen a steady amount of activity due to the tourist industry," he said. "Early indicators are the Lancaster store will be steadier and less cyclic [than York and Camp Hill]."

Nor is Gish overly worried about doing business in an adverse market.

"I hear about furniture stores taking such a beating [the past few years], but we were born into this environment when we opened our first store in 2003. We don't know any different," he said. "We watch our money cautiously when it comes to expenditures."

Wolf's Furniture also opened a new store — in Hanover in June — but Doug Wolf said that was to take advantage of the blanket advertising his company does throughout the region, despite the overall softness in sales.

It's a good time for people to buy furniture, Wolf said, because retailers have gotten more aggressive about discounting and are pushing their suppliers for merchandise with more features for the same or less money.

Interior's Lehman noted that his company opened an outlet center last year as part of a five-year shift to offer furniture at a broader range of prices.

"We used to be an exclusive high-end store," Lehman said. "As the years have gone on, we've done a lot of research, and we found we were way over the market."

Roth's Furniture appears to be making a similar shift with its emergency sell-off.

In a written statement provided in response to an interview request, the store stated that "increased operating cost and increasing cost from suppliers, plus declining sales over the past three years" have prompted it to sell off its "expensive gallery-type furniture" and "tailor our assortment" with more "affordable choices of home goods."

In a similar vein, Olde Mill's Blowers said his store's broad range of merchandise gives it a cushion against a falloff in furniture sales.

"The product mix keeps people coming to you at different stages of their lives," he said.

Still, Blowers worries about the economy and its effect on people's willingness to buy furniture, especially the baby boomers who make up a big portion of the upper-middle-income clientele who buys his store's furniture.

Those boomers are becoming empty nesters and have begun downsizing their homes, which would normally be the time when they would buy more furniture, he said.

"I'm hoping all their stock portfolios come back in the next few years," Blowers said. "That will seriously affect how they live the next 20 years."

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Dennis Larison is editor of the business section and can be reached by telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com.