The Lane furniture brand is operated by United Furniture Industries, which reportedly fired all of its employees.
Unified Furniture Industries has terminated all employees. With the exception of over-the-road drivers who are currently out on deliveries, all employees of the company—which has recently operated under the Lane brand—were immediately terminated via email.
Furniture Today obtained a copy of the email sent to employees:
“At the instruction of the Board of Directors of United Furniture Industries, Inc., and all subsidiaries (the “Company”), we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances the Company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately, on November 21, 2022, with the exception of over-the-road drivers that are out on delivery. Your layoff from the Company is expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of COBRA.
Over-the-road drivers that are out on delivery will be paid for the balance of the week. Whether or not you have completed your delivery, please immediately return equipment, inventory, and delivery documents for those deliveries that have been completed to one of the following locations: Winston-Salem, N.C., Verona, Miss., or Victorville, Calif. location. To be clear, do not complete any additional deliveries.
We regret that this difficult and unexpected situation has made this necessary. Additional information will be provided shortly.
Thank you for your service and dedication.
UFI/Lane Corporate Communications”
An initial communication was sent out just before the stroke of midnight on November 1, according to now-former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was unclear what the company would do next. 21, which instructed employees not to report to their work location in the morning. The notification mentioned above has since taken the place of that communication, which was later cancelled.
In order to find out if the business had contacted any of the Top 100 furniture retailers, Furniture Today reached out to them. Those who have responded so far have said they have not heard from the company in advance or in any correspondence as of this writing.
The business fired its CEO, CFO, and executive vice president of sales in June of this year, and Todd Evans, the former president of Standard Furniture, was appointed CEO in their place. Following this, the company reorganized its sales team and appointed Ruff Thomas and Keith News to leadership positions in sales, with Thomas serving as president of sales for Lane’s domestic division and News serving as president of sales for Lane’s import division.
A month later, the business closed several facilities and let 300 employees go. Included in this were the conversion of a manufacturing facility in Amory, Miss., and the closure of its High Point metal stamping facility., to a warehousing-only facility; and transitioning a An East Coast distribution center will operate out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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