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WARREN, Mich., May 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Torrential rains left southeast Michigan coping with widespread flooding Wednesday, damaging the contents of many local homes including furniture and mattresses. Beginning today, Art Van Furniture is offering unprecedented help with the Art Van Furniture and Mattress Flood Damage Relief Program for Michigan.

For the first time in its 51 year history Art Van Furniture will extend its employee purchase program pricing to flood victims. Here’s how the program works. Guests will need to bring photos of damaged furniture or an insurance check into an Art Van store.  Their purchase will need to be approved by a store manager or sales manager and is good for a one time purchase. This will also include free delivery.

“In case you are wondering why we are doing this, the answer is simple,” said Art Van Elslander, founder and chairman of Art Van Furniture, “it’s the right thing to do. Many of our neighbors are hurting and we want to support them the way they have supported us for five decades.”

While southeast Michigan was hardest hit by the storms, the program is valid state-wide offering assistance to all Michigan homeowners who were impacted by this spring’s severe weather conditions.  The employee discount program expires in six months.

About Art Van Furniture

Art Van Furniture is Michigan‘s largest furniture retailer and America’s largest independent furniture retailer. The company operates 34 stores in 33 communities throughout Michigan, a full service e-commerce website, plus three freestanding Art Van PureSleep bedding stores in Canton, Troy and Rochester Hills, Michigan. Founded in 1959, the company is family-owned and headquartered in Warren, Mich. Check out artvan.com for more information.

SOURCE Art Van Furniture

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Devastated by the housing crash, Carls Furniture filed for bankruptcy protection this week and will close its Kendall store and could retire a location in north Miami-Dade, too.

The furniture chain, based in Coconut Creek, will close its Boca Raton store and the one at 7501 SW 100th St. in Kendall, according to court filings and an ad on the Carls’ website touting discounts up to 70 percent for both locations. In seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Carls lawyers listed $6 million in assets and $9 million in liabilities.

Carls has been struggling financially for much of the last four years. As the housing market plummeted, so did the upscale furniture retailer’s sales.

To generate cash and reduce overhead costs, the company has tried various strategies, including closing stores and selling off real estate.

Carls stores in Aventura and West Palm Beach were closed around 2007. After marketing its entire portfolio for sale in 2007, the company later sold the real estate for its stores in Stuart and North Palm Beach to a developer, but leased them back. Those stores were closed earlier this year.

To raise more cash and pay down debt, in 2008 Carls sold a major stake in its Carls Patio business to an Ohio-based private equity firm, Weinberg Bell Group.

“We wanted to shore up our balance sheet and pay off our debt in full to make sure we were on very solid ground should the downturn continue,” Jeff Baker, president of Carls Furniture, said in 2008. “We’re going to do everything we can to survive the downturn and be one of the players that is still here in the long run.”

Carls Patio sent out an announcement Wednesday saying it is not part of the bankruptcy filing.

While bankruptcy filings list Carl’s Furniture as a 10 percent owner of Carls Patio, Carls Patio President Gary Ecoff said in a statement that his company “has no affiliation whatsoever with Carls Furniture.’’

Ecoff said Carls Furniture sold its interest in Carls Patio in 2008. The Carls Furniture bankruptcy does not list Carls Patio as a participant. Ecoff was not immediately available for an interview. Carls executives also were not available for interviews Wednesday morning.

The Carls Furniture filings list the landlord at the Carls other Miami-Dade location as a top creditor. Failed rent negotiations with Continental Equities, the landlord for Carls’ north Dade store at 1400 NW 167th St., helped push the chain into bankruptcy, Carls lawyer Robert Furr told the South Florida Business Journal.

“We’re another victim of the economy, but we probably wouldn’t have filed for Chapter 11 if the landlord in North Dade had worked with us more,’’ Furr said, according to the publication’s website. “That location will probably close also, sometime this summer.’’

The Miami Herald also is listed as one of the smaller creditors, claiming $128,000 for advertising fees.

The filings list about $1 million in unsecured claims from companies controlled by Myron Baker, the longtime chairman and CEO of the family-run company. The Baker companies own two Carls locations and a Carls warehouse, and collect rent from the chain.

In an effort to protect U.S. manufacturers from the practice of dumping, the Commerce Department hit Chinese makers of bedroom furniture with import tariffs in 2005. Instead of slowing down the import of artificially low-priced beds and night stands, the move actually increased them, The Washington Post reports.

Woodworth Wooden Industries in southern China used to ship 400 containers of bedroom furniture monthly to the United States, but now sends just 60.

However, the company, along with others, moved parts of its operations to Vietnam to avoid the tariffs. As a result, imported bedroom furniture accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. market, up from 58 percent before the tariff.

While China exported $691 million in bedroom furniture to the United States last year, down from $1.2 billion in 2004, exports of the same goods from Vietnam have gone from $151 million to $931 million.

The number of Americans making furniture in America is now less than half of what it was before the tariffs.

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