2023 was a challenging year for Bassett Furniture as each quarter saw a year-over-year drop in sales, including the recently completed 4th quarter.

The company realized $94.7 million in consolidated fourth-quarter sales. "The comparison to last year’s pandemic-fueled results plagued us again in our fourth quarter as consolidated sales fell by 21.7% resulting in considerably reduced operating results," said Robert H. Spilman, Jr., company chairman and CEO. 

The sales drop marked the second consecutive quarterly loss. 

From a wholesale perspective, Silman said that all categories experienced order declines. He said that although our Club Level, Bench Made domestic wood and domestic upholstery held up slightly better than the remaining product lines. Incoming wholesale orders were very similar for the final nine months of the year and appear to have stabilized, albeit at a relatively low level. 

"We do sense that the massive inventory buildup at our open market accounts has finally begun to subside, which should provide new opportunities," he said. "Over the year, we made necessary headcount adjustments to our domestic manufacturing footprint and remain vigilant as we match our backlogs with our production capacity."

He added that the quarter and the year ended with $36.0 million of wholesale inventory, a 38.7% reduction compared to year-end 2022. As expected, we did see a nice improvement in the overall margins compared to the third quarter of 2023 as we continued to cycle through excess Club Level inventory and imported wood products that both had the inflated container freight from 2022. Spilman said that the company essentially cut the excess Club Level inventory in half over the fourth quarter to $3.5 million and expect to sell the remainder over the first two quarters of 2024. Despite a 16.7% decrease in domestic upholstery sales from our Newton facility compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, we slightly increased our operating profit; a testament to the operational efficiencies of our associates in those facilities. 

"We expect to continue to see margin improvement in our wholesale operations over the course of 2024, he said.

For a full look at the results, click here.