South Shore Furniture announced on Monday that it is shutting down operations, telling its 126 employees Monday morning that the company will gradually close its two plants in Sainte‑Croix and Coaticook, Que., over the next several weeks.
The move ends an 86‑year run for the family‑owned dresser, bed and bookshelf maker. South Shore said its own sales dropped 77 per cent between 2022 and 2025, a collapse it blamed on low‑cost imports and shifting trade patterns that left demand “vanish[ing] on both sides of the border.”
Those figures are the weight of the announcement: 126 jobs affected, two plants to be shuttered, and a company that has supplied ready‑to‑assemble furniture for nearly nine decades closing while one of its towns, Sainte‑Croix, totals just 2,700 people and counts South Shore as one of two major employers.
The company framed the decision as the product of international competition and trade policy. South Shore said it could not continue in the face of dumping by rivals from China and Vietnam and cited the effect of U.S. import tariffs on its business. In a statement the company said, "For Canadian manufacturers such as South Shore Furniture, demand has just simply vanished on both sides of the border."
Charles Laflamme, whose family founded and owned the company, spoke to the collapse in blunt terms. "This is an extremely difficult situation for our family and for our employees," he said, and added, "We tried everything to maintain our operations and their jobs but it’s become impossible to pursue our business in a market where World Trade Organization rules are not respected."
That complaint reflects the friction behind the closure. Gilles Pelletier, commenting on recent trade flows, said Asian countries have been increasing shipments of low‑cost furniture into Canada as the U.S. tightens access to imports. "And in the end, we’re being put in the same boat as China and Vietnam. That wasn’t the case before," he said, while noting that American manufacturers were highlighting tariff‑free furniture at a home furnishings industry trade show in High Point, N.C., last week.
The tension is clear: U.S. tariffs were meant to restrict imports, but South Shore says those measures redirected Asian exports toward less restrictive markets such as Canada, undercutting cross‑border demand for the Canadian maker. Executives and owners repeatedly invoked the mismatch between trade rules and market behavior as the reason their sales evaporated.
The closure will play out over several weeks as the Sainte‑Croix and Coaticook plants wind down. South Shore makes ready‑to‑assemble dressers, beds, nightstands and bookshelves; customers and supplier contracts will have to be unwound and 126 workers will face immediate job loss in two towns where options are limited. For Sainte‑Croix, a town of 2,700 southwest of Quebec City, losing one of its two major employers will be an abrupt economic shock.
Industry context sharpens the picture. The company’s announcement follows a broader retreat from Canadian furniture manufacturing: other producers moved away from domestic furniture operations last year. South Shore’s founders built the business in 1940; after 86 years the family is closing the doors because, in their words, the market has ceased to function under current trade conditions.
The most consequential question now is not whether the plants will close — the company has said they will — but how policymakers will respond to a pattern of shifting trade flows that ownership says has hollowed out a long‑standing Canadian manufacturer. For Charles Laflamme and the 126 employees told the news on Monday morning, the shutdown will be measured in weeks; for a town of 2,700, the effect will be measured for years.
