Marco Saltalamacchiai
Analyst
Good afternoon, yes. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you, Pasquale. I would like to comment the results for the first quarter. In the first quarter, total revenues for the period were down by 11.2% as compared to 2013. This reduction in sales was partially expected by the plan, due to internal activities much related to restructuring in the operation in both all our Italian and Chinese and Romanian plants.
There have been external factors, and namely, some of our largest customers located especially in the Northern America, especially in the United States and Canada, suffered because of the adverse weather conditions that hit the Atlantic coast during the first months of the year. In addition to that, we had a few accounts concerned in Far East and China. All those accounts, they've been anyway providing us still a positive outlook for the rest of the year.
Secondly, and most importantly, most of our activities in terms of presentations of the new products, especially for Natuzzi Italia, has happened during the end of March through the different international fairs that we attended, and namely, Wanju [ph] in China end of March, High Point in beginning of April, and last but not least, the Salone del Mobile in Milan at mid-April.
As a matter of fact, we expect and, actually, we have evidence showing that the order flows by our customers is starting to grow starting from April, and I may confirm that over the last few weeks, we've been seeing very encouraging patterns in our order intake, especially in the Natuzzi Editions and Softaly model line.
In addition to that, I might also add that we have completed the reorganization, or we are about to complete the reorganization of the commercial team in North America. Now, all the team is on board. And we are about to complete the process in Western Europe and in Asia.
We've been working not only on the revenues, but we've been working, as you might remember, also on the cost side by closing noneffective, not profitable doors. Out of the 13 stores foreseen by the plan, we have closed already 8 stores. And in the meanwhile, we reported a 19%, 1 9%, increase in sales on the same-store sales basis against last year. As a consequence of the above-mentioned actions, we expect to see -- to be on track with the plan already in the second quarter, and we keep a positive outlook for the rest of the year.