Growth in Furniture Manufacturing is Tough at Present, but Rewarding Ahead

FDT Bureau

The scaling up in furniture manufacturing in India has been a point of debate for majority of manufacturers who still remain in the same size where they were a decade ago. There are hardly hundreds who have scaled up from a small venture to a big company by expanding plant, machinery and larger market footprints. While talking to furniture manufacturers, we at FDT see a huge absence of entrepreneur’s names or brands that have successfully set an example others could follow or gain inspiration from.

On the contrary, in just five years, the mushrooming start-ups on e-format or e-commerce market place have attained a pleasant rise and size. Probably the ground reality in furniture manufacturing is more than tricky and troublesome than it does when you are getting into online start-up business.

Furniture Manufacturing and making its successful and scalable depends on many factors like, the type of furniture you produce, the target customers, the production capacity and production efficiency, then identifying markets and setting up distribution. When you aspire to become big, one certainly need a professional approach. Probably ‘market researched data-based info that can offer, aware and propel to lead you to right direction has been either remotely available or people have ignored that factor’.

During our research at FDT, I believe that ‘In India, probably 95 percent of the furniture ventures stay where they start because they focus on higher margins, personalised retailing and practically remain and retain themselves as a customised furniture provider for the walking customers or referral base marketing. That is why the “custom made wooden furniture” seems a good fit for the contractors where they thrive on margins but fail to upscale, grow big or become organised.

On the contrary panel-based office furniture makers remain fragile due to very low margins and competition from imports. For modular furniture makers, Orders, Margins and payment issues pose a big challenge and here they fail to grow. The very few who adopt professional thinking, dare to borrow and go ahead in market to set up a distribution channel do it with plenty of difficulties.

With make in India initiative, higher customs duty on furniture, returning sentiments among new home buyers from budget segment, growing online purchases hold possibilities that can offer a whole new market and scalable opportunities if one dare to take furniture manufacturing on a bigger and targeted scale. The Furniture design and Technology magazine is on its way to present ground reality driven content and to bring continuity in its issues steadily. In this issue we have informative content related to 5M (Men, Material, Machine, Markets & Management) that we are going ahead with. India wood offers huge opportunity to see, learn and grow. See you all at Hall no 4, stall no E506.

Take the plunge.

Pragat Dvivedi

Founder Editor

Furniture Design & Technology (FDT Magazine)
www.furnituredesignindia.com

This editorial was originally published in Furniture Design Technology (FDT Magazine) Jan – Feb 2018 print issue. If you want to read the full magazine, please subscribe Furniture Design Technology Magazine here:  

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