Seek the road! Furniture inflection point forced reshuffle transformation

The furniture industry is one of the representative industries of China's light industry. Since the accession to the WTO, China's furniture exports have maintained an increase. Although the global financial crisis in 2008 had caused temporary weakness, it soon resumed its export growth. In 2013, faced with many unfavorable factors such as rising labor costs, raw material and logistics costs, and sluggish international demand, the scale of exports still exceeded 50 billion U.S. dollars, reaching 51.82 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 6.2% year-on-year.

However, in 2014, China's furniture exports declined for the first time. According to statistics from the Customs Information Network, the value of China's furniture and its parts exports was US$11.31 billion in the first quarter of this year, a year-on-year decrease of 8.1%.

“The second quarter saw a slight improvement over the first quarter, but it was still declining. The rate of decline for the entire first half of the year was 7.6%.” A few days ago, Zhong Shuhong, deputy general manager of Shanghai Bohua International Exhibition Co., Ltd., accepted the “Private Economy News” reporter.

The exit inflection point is steep

According to statistics from the China Furniture Association, China's overall building materials sales decreased in the first half of this year compared with the same period of last year, and some second and third-tier brands’ furniture exports have apparently declined. More and more Chinese furniture companies are beginning to hit the “internal trade brand” this year. .

Specifically, in the first quarter of this year, China exported 9.49 billion U.S. dollars of furniture by general trade, which was a year-on-year decline of 9.6%, accounting for 83.9% of China's total furniture exports during the same period; and imported furniture processing trade mode which exported 1.48 billion U.S. dollars, down 0.4% year-on-year. Accounting for 13.1%. In addition, the amount of furniture exported to the border by small-scale trade was 33.261 million U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 28.6%. The situation in the second quarter is similar to that in the first quarter.

"In January 2014, the export volume was 5.65 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 4.4% year-on-year and an increase of 7.1% from the previous period, setting a record high. In February, the value of exports fell rapidly. The monthly export volume was only 220 million U.S. dollars, down 35.7% year-on-year. A related person in charge of a furniture company in Guangdong told reporters.

Judging from the global regional layout, the United States and the European Union are still the main export markets for furniture in China. In the first quarter of this year, furniture exported to the United States was 3.45 billion U.S. dollars, down 0.9% year-on-year, accounting for 30.5% of China's total furniture exports for the same period; furniture exported to the EU was 2.44 billion U.S. dollars, down 0.1% year-on-year, accounting for 21.6%; Exports to Japan and South Korea rose in a contrarian direction. Japan exported 760 million U.S. dollars worth of furniture and 240 million U.S. dollars worth of South Korean furniture, up 17.9 percent and 8.1 percent respectively. Although there is a certain growth rate, but because the base can not be compared with the European and American markets, it can not change the current situation of the decline in the total exports of furniture in the first half of this year.

Zhong Shuhong told reporters that China, as the world's largest consumer market, is expected to have 500 billion yuan in furniture consumption every year. This market is highly attractive to domestic and foreign manufacturers. "The overall domestic market is more than foreign." The market is more promising."

In the opinion of Zhong Yihong, for those export-oriented furniture companies that are accustomed to the OEM OEM mode, the current market for exploiting domestic demand can no longer be merely a good slogan.

“The business model and the ecological environment of domestic demand and export are different.” Zhong Xiaohong said, especially for the furniture enterprises transformed from the order-based external demand market, the domestic demand market is indeed facing greater challenges, including branding operations. , improve the sense of design and so on.