WILKES COUNTY, N.C. — La-Z-Boy Inc. confirmed this week it will shut down Lea Industries and two company warehouses in North Wilkesboro by Jan. 1 after not being able to find a buyer for the youth bedroom manufacturer, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
La-Z-Boy, based in Monroe, Mich., announced in April its plans to put Lea up for sale, as well as shutter the North Wilkesboro facilities and close a wooden furniture plant in Caldwell County as part of exiting domestic production of those products.
“At this time, we have been unable to secure a buyer for Lea and made the decision to close it by Dec. 31 and sell the remaining inventory,” said Kathy Liebmann, director of corporate communications. “All current Lea open orders will be fulfilled, and we will continue to honor any product warranty issues through our customer service de-partment.
Altogether, La-Z-Boy said in April it is eliminating 100 jobs in North Carolina, though it did not provide a breakdown of North Wilkesboro and Hudson. The North Wilkesboro operations will be transferred to remaining Hudson operations.
Wooden furniture represents about 10 percent of La-Z-Boy’s revenue.
It only became a segment of its revenue when La-Z-Boy bought LADD Furniture of Greensboro for $299 million in September 1999 in what analysts considered at the time as a transformational deal for the company and industry.
The LADD deal was supposed to create the nation’s biggest publicly traded residential-furniture company with more than $2 billion in annual sales and 21,000 employees.
However, the economic downturns of 2001-03 and 2008 to the present, the waves of lower-cost imports and La-Z-Boy’s struggles to gain traction in wooden furniture eventually punctured that revenue possibility.