Feb. 26--Stanley Furniture Co. announced plans Wednesday to lay off 100 production employees at its factory in Stanleytown in Henry County.

The layoffs take effect March 27.

After the cuts, Stanley Furniture will employ about 1,000 people in Henry County. It also operates a facility in North Carolina.

The company attributed the layoffs to the national recession and related sales impacts.

Henry County and the city of Martinsville's manufacturing industries have been battered for years by imports and other market forces. Martinsville's jobless rate was Virginia's highest in December at 15.4 percent.

Unlike nearby competitors Hooker Furniture Corp. and Bassett Furniture Industries, Stanley still manufactures domestically the majority of its case goods furniture.

"About two-thirds of our revenues come from domestic production," said Doug Payne, the company's executive vice president of finance and administration. "We do not see this going lower. If anything, it may increase over time as we look to bring production back in-house."

In October 2007, the company announced it would cut 250 jobs when it converted a facility closer to Martinsville into a warehouse and consolidated manufacturing at Stanleytown.

At the time, Jeffrey Scheffer was Stanley's chairman, president and chief executive officer.

In September, Scheffer resigned. Longtime company leader Albert Prillaman left retirement to return to the helm. Prillaman, 63, had retired as Stanley's chairman in April 2005.

On Jan. 28, the company reported earnings results for the fourth quarter 2008 and year ended Dec. 31. Sales for the year dropped about 20 percent compared with 2007. Fourth-quarter sales were off about 25 percent.

Earnings in 2008 were boosted by $11.5 million received from duties imposed on imports of Chinese wooden bedroom furniture deemed to violate U.S. anti-dumping regulations. U.S. Customs and Border Protection collects the duties as ordered by the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000. The money is distributed to eligible manufacturers who have continued to invest in their companies.

Stanley said it will work with the Virginia Employment Commission and the West Piedmont Workforce Investment Network to assist the affected workers, who will likely be eligible for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits.

The company trades on Nasdaq as STLY. The stock price's 52-week high was $13.89; its 52-week low was $5.60. The stock price closed Wednesday at $7.60, down 3 cents.

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