Business

L.A. wildfires prompt surge in local home furnishings market

Published

1 year ago

March 10, 2025

L.A. wildfires prompt surge in local home furnishings market

The day after the Palisades fire broke out, luxury staging company Vesta began manufacturing beds around the clock.

Vesta produced 1,000 that first week from its factory near downtown Los Angeles. The beds — along with the company’s supply of sofas, dining tables, outdoor furniture, area rugs, linens, kitchenware and even faux plants — were quickly rented by displaced wildfire victims.

“We’re doing basically toothbrush-ready homes. Everything needed to get back up and running,” co-founder Brett Baer said. Some clients had lost all of their possessions except “the pair of shoes that they got out of the fire with.”

The January wildfires created a highly unusual situation in the local home furnishings market. Thousands of residential structures and everything inside them burned down, setting off a frantic scramble to find new lodging and replace the entirety of a home’s contents.

Many of those items, such as furniture and appliances, are typically big-ticket purchases with long life cycles, making rebuying an infrequent occurrence under normal circumstances.

Now, sellers of furniture and other home decor around L.A. are seeing an unexpected rise in sales. It’s a trend they anticipate will accelerate in the months to come as those affected by the fires receive insurance payouts and move out of temporary accommodations, where many still remain, into permanent residences.

“Natural disasters such as the California fires, floods, hurricanes, etc., create incredible spikes in demand,” said Ray Allegrezza, a director for the International Home Furnishings Representatives Assn. “West Coast furniture retailers are realizing a windfall of sorts…. It is a shame that the business had to come as a result of this disaster.”

About two weeks after the start of the Palisades and Eaton blazes, Ikea stores in Los Angeles County began noticing an uptick in sales for sleep and kitchen basics, said Gus Tinajero, the company’s Los Angeles area manager.

Ikea stores in the L.A. area saw an increase in sales of bedding and kitchenware after the fires.

(Adam Tschorn / Los Angeles Times)

“Once we started to see the trend, we started to react,” he said, which included increasing orders from its Kern County distribution center and allocating more in-store floor space and pallets for coveted essentials such as comforters.

“We have planned for a prolonged period where we see high demand in those categories,” said Tinajero, who was Ikea’s area manager in Houston when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. “It’s not something you ever hope for or plan for, but the reality is it’s [thousands of destroyed] structures — of course you see that there’s going to be a need in the market.”

By far, the biggest impact of the January wildfires was on homes.

In all, just under 13,000 households were displaced by the Palisades and Eaton fires. They came from nearly 9,700 single-family homes and condominiums, almost 700 apartment units, more than 2,000 units of duplexes and bungalow courts and 373 mobile homes that Cal Fire determined were either destroyed or heavily damaged.

Related businesses, such as interior designers and home staging companies, are also mobilizing to meet the unprecedented demand. Many have started to offer turnkey packages, outfitting new homes from top to bottom.

Vesta’s swift pivot to mass-manufacturing beds and other furniture and renting its stock of lightly used home goods has upended its business model: The company’s luxury leasing division now accounts for more than 90% of its sales, a massive jump from just 15% at the start of the year. Baer said Vesta is on track to take in $100 million in revenue this year.

On a recent Tuesday morning, Baer made his way through Vesta’s 6,000-square-foot Florence factory, maneuvering past stacks of upholstered headboards and newly built armchairs wrapped in green plastic as workers sanded down wooden tables and benches.

Vesta was founded in 2017 and serves affluent customers in L.A., San Francisco, New York and Miami. Today it has 360 employees, 30 of them hired since the wildfires began to keep up with the surge in business.

Originally focused on residential and commercial staging, Vesta branched out to include interior design, retail sales and short-term rentals; it designs all of its furniture, producing half in L.A. and outsourcing the rest to third-party manufacturers.

The company doesn’t lease its pieces a la carte, instead offering tailored whole-home packages with on-site setup. Many wildfire victims have been forced to downsize from large homes in Pacific Palisades to condos and apartments, so Vesta has been working with customers to adapt to smaller-format spaces, like sourcing trundle beds for families with young children.

“For displaced people, we’re doing anything between like 1,000 square feet, which may be a couple thousand dollars a month, to one that’s 20,000 square feet in Brentwood that’ll probably be $20,000 a month to rent everything: furniture, cutlery, linens, pillows, mattresses,” Baer said. “A lot of people are like, ‘I just want to move into a completely done house, down to toilet paper holders.’”

The revenue boost comes after a sluggish period for the furniture industry, which experienced a boom during the pandemic as people quarantined and spent heavily on sprucing up their homes.

That tapered off in recent years due to a number of factors including shifts in consumer spending, high inflation and a slowdown in the housing market, leading to a surplus of merchandise for many home furnishing retailers going into this year.

“Fortunately for consumers in distress and needing furniture in short order, inventory levels are still abundant,” Allegrezza said.

Consumer spending for residential furniture and bedding fell 3% last year to $116.1 billion, according to the American Home Furnishings Alliance. The number of production workers for furniture and related products fell to 235,500 people from 244,800 in 2023, the group said.

Later that morning, at Vesta’s cavernous warehouse in Pico Rivera, workers packaged and loaded furniture onto trucks as the company’s interior designers browsed the aisles for items including lamps, board games, stuffed animals, Peloton bikes and framed art.

The last couple of months have been “incredibly turbulent” for the company, Baer said. Thirty-four homes that were staged with Vesta’s furnishings burned down or were damaged in the Palisades fire, and he said insurance would cover only about 70% of the losses.

“It’s been a double-edged sword. We took a huge hit there,” he said. “But then there’s like this regeneration on the other side: Everything on the Westside is selling. Most of those people want furniture, too. We’re trying to replenish all that inventory as fast as we can.”

Business

Disneyland Resort President Thomas Mazloum named parks chief

Published

3 hours ago

March 11, 2026

Press Room

Disneyland Resort President Thomas Mazloum named parks chief

Disneyland Resort President Thomas Mazloum has been named chairman of Walt Disney Co.’s experiences division, the company said Tuesday.

Mazloum succeeds soon-to-be Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro as the head of the Mouse House’s vital parks portfolio, which has become the economic engine for the Burbank media and entertainment giant. His purview includes Disney’s theme parks, famed Imagineering division, merchandise, cruise line, as well as the Aulani resort and spa in Hawaii.

Jill Estorino will become the head of Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. She previously served as president and managing director of Disney Parks International and oversaw the company’s theme parks and resorts in Europe and Asia.

Estorino and Mazloum will assume their new roles on March 18, the same day as D’Amaro and incoming Disney President and Chief Creative Officer Dana Walden.

“Thomas Mazloum is an exceptional leader with a genuine appreciation for our cast members and a proven track record of delivering growth,” D’Amaro said in a statement. “His focus on service excellence, broad international leadership and strong connection to the creativity that brings our stories to life make him the right leader to guide Disney Experiences into its next chapter.”

Mazloum had been about a year into his tenure at Disneyland. Before that, he was head of Disney Signature Experiences, which includes the cruise line. He was trained in hospitality in Europe.

In his time at Disneyland, Mazloum oversaw the park’s 70th anniversary celebration and recently pledged to eliminate time limitations for park-hopping, which are designed to manage foot traffic at Disneyland and California Adventure.

Mazloum will now oversee a 10-year, $60-billion investment plan for Disney’s overall experiences business, which includes new themed lands in Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World. At Disneyland, that expansion could result in at least $1.9 billion of development.

The size of that investment indicates how important the parks are to Disney’s bottom line. Last year, the experiences business brought in nearly 57% of the company’s operating income. Maintaining that momentum, as well as fending off competitors such as Universal Studios, is key to Disney’s continued growth.

In his new role, Mazloum will have to keep an eye on “international visitation headwinds” at its U.S.-based parks, which the company has said probably will factor into its earnings for its fiscal second quarter. At Disneyland Resort, that dip was mitigated by the park’s high percentage of California-based visitors.

Times staff writer Todd Martens contributed to this report.

Business

What soaring gas prices mean for California’s EV market

Published

15 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

What soaring gas prices mean for California’s EV market

It has been a bumpy road for the electric vehicle market as declining federal support and plateauing public interest have eaten away at sales.

But EV sellers could soon receive a boost from an unexpected source: The war in Iran is pushing up gas prices.

As Americans look to save money at the pump, more will consider switching to an electric or hybrid vehicle. Average gas prices in the U.S. have risen nearly 17% since Feb. 28 to reach $3.48 per gallon. In California, the average is $5.20 per gallon.

Electric vehicles are pricier than gasoline-powered cars and charging them isn’t cheap with current electricity prices, but sky-high gas prices can tip the scales for consumers deciding which kind of vehicle to buy next.

“We probably will see an uptick in EV adoption and particularly hybrid adoption” if gas prices stay high, said Sam Abuelsamid, an auto analyst at Telemetry Agency. “The last time we had oil prices top $100 per barrel was early 2022 and that’s when we saw EV sales really start to pick up in the U.S.”

In a 2022 AAA survey, 77% of respondents said saving money on gas was their primary motivator for purchasing an electric vehicle. That year, 25% of survey respondents said they were likely or very likely to purchase an EV.

As oil prices cooled, the number fell to16% in 2025.

In California, annual sales of new light-duty zero-emission vehicles jumped 43% in 2022, according to the state’s Energy Commission. The market share of zero-emission vehicles among all light-duty vehicles sold rose from 12% in 2021 to 19% in 2022.

“Prior to 2022, we didn’t really have EVs available when we had oil price shocks,” Abuelsamid said. “But every time we did, it coincided with a move toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.”

Dealers are anticipating a windfall.

Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Assn., predicted enthusiasm for EVs will rebound across California if oil prices don’t come down.

“If prior gasoline price spikes are any indication, you tend to see interest in more fuel-efficient vehicles,” he said.

Rising gas prices could be a lifeline for EV makers at a time when federal support for green cars has been declining.

Under President Trump, a federal $7,500 tax incentive for new electric vehicles was eliminated in September, along with a $4,000 incentive for used electric vehicles.

In California, the zero-emission vehicle share of the total new-vehicle market was 22% through the first 10 months of 2025, then dropped sharply to 12% in the last two months of the year, according to the California Auto Outlook.

Meanwhile Tesla, the most popular EV brand in the country, has grappled with an implosion of its reputation with some consumers after its chief executive, Elon Musk, became one of Trump’s most vocal supporters and helped run the controversial Department of Government Efficiency.

Over the last several months, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have pared back EV ambitions.

Other automakers, including Nissan, announced plans to stop producing their more affordable electric models.

The Trump administration has moved to roll back federal fuel economy standards and revoked California’s permission to implement a ban on new gas-powered car sales by 2035.

David Reichmuth, a researcher with the Clean Transportation program in the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the shift in production plans will affect EV availability, even if demand surges.

That could keep people from switching to cleaner vehicles regardless of higher gas prices.

“This is a transition that we need to make for both public health and to try to slow the damage from global warming, whether or not the price of gasoline is $3 or $5 or $6 a gallon,” he said.

According to Cox Automotive, new EV sales nationally were down 41% in November from a year earlier. Used EV sales were down 14% year over year that month.

To be sure, oil prices can fluctuate wildly in times of uncertainty. It will take time for consumers to decide on new purchases.

Brian Kim, who manages used car sales at Ford of Downtown LA, said he has yet to see a jump in the number of people interested in EVs, hybrids or more fuel-efficient gas-powered engines.

Still, if the price at the pump stays stuck above its current level, it could happen soon.

“Once the gas prices hit six [dollars per gallon] or more and people feel it in their pocket, maybe things will start to change,” he said.

Business

Nearly 60 gigawatts of U.S. clean power stalled, trade group finds

Published

1 day ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Nearly 60 gigawatts of U.S. clean power stalled, trade group finds

A total of 59 gigawatts of U.S. clean energy projects are facing delays at a time when demand for power from AI data centers is surging, according to a trade group study.

Developers are seeing an average delay of 19 months over issues such as long interconnection times, supply constraints and regulatory barriers, the American Clean Power Assn. said in a quarterly market report.

The backlog is happening despite the growing need for power on grids that are being taxed by energy-hungry data centers and increased manufacturing. The Trump administration has implemented a slew of policies to slow the build-out of solar and wind projects, including delaying approvals on federal lands.

The potential energy generation facing delays is the equivalent of 59 traditional nuclear reactors, enough to power more than 44 million homes simultaneously.

“Current policy instability is beginning to impact investor confidence and negatively impact project timelines at a time when demand is surging,” American Clean Power Chief Policy Officer JC Sandberg said in a statement.

Despite the hurdles, developers were able to bring more than 50 gigawatts of wind, solar and batteries online in 2025, accounting for more than 90% of all new power capacity in the U.S., the report found. Clean power purchase agreements declined 36% in 2025 compared with 2024, signaling that the build-out of clean power in the U.S. could be lower in the 2028 to 2030 time period, according to the report.

Chediak writes for Bloomberg.