Loves Furniture & Mattress sued by supplier

Filing comes as retailer consolidates stores

Loves Furniture & Mattresses, which opened in former Art Van Furniture locations, is accused of owing a supplier $1.8 million for furniture delivered last year.

Loves and its equityfirm owner, U.S. Assets Inc., were sued Dec. 31 by Southern Motion Inc. and Fusion Furniture Inc., affiliated corporations based in Mississippi, in U.S. District Court in Detroit. The plaintiffs allege breach of contract.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of Loves announcing two weeks ago it was closing eight stores as part of a consolidation of its total of 32 stores in Michigan and other states into 13 locations – a dozen in Michigan and one in Toledo.

Loves CEO Mack Peters at the time said COVID-19 caused too much of a supply chain issue.

Peters said Loves owed significant amounts of money to several of its vendors, including the Detroitbased Fairmont Sign Co., to which it must pay over $750,000.

“We are working on trying to pay everybody,” Peters said last month. “We got a little bit overextended in some areas and we’re trying to catch up with people.”

The lawsuit says Loves has violated a contract signed June 30 for Southern Motion and Fusion Furniture to supply furniture over six months, with a $2 million cap.

Furniture was delivered between August and October, and invoices required payment to Southern Motion within 45 days and to Fusion Furniture within 30 days.

Loves owes $1.43 million to Southern Motion and $380,000 to Fusion Furniture, the lawsuit says.

“Loves Furniture failed to pay plaintiffs for certain merchandise provided by plaintiffs in accordance with the payment terms,” the lawsuit states.

Loves announced in August it had hired about 350 people and was looking to add 1,000 employees to eventually open 18 locations in Michigan and additional stores in other states.

Last month, Loves announced it would be closing stores in Dearborn, Waterford, Port Huron, Livonia, Saginaw, Bay City, Muskegon and Petoskey.

In May, Dallas-based US Assets Inc. purchased 17 former Art Van leased store locations in Michigan, and 10 other Art Van and Levin and Wolf locations in five other states.

At that time, the company said it would be headquartered in Royal Oak but later indicated it operate out of the prior Art Van headquarters on 14 Mile Road in Warren.

U.S. Assets’ purchase came after Art Van’s owners, the equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners in Boston, announced in early March that Art Van was filing for bankruptcy and would be conducting liquidation sales. But later that month it suddenly closed operations after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The stores by July reopened for liquidation sales.

Art Van was founded in 1959 in Warren by Art Van Elslander, and the chain grew to 190 stores in nine states. Thomas H. Lee Partners in 2017 bought Art Van.

Van Elslander died in 2018.