China’s Furniture Retail

October 31, 2007  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on November 2007 If you think globalization only affects people in developed countries, take a walk down Huai Hai Zhong Road in Shanghai to get a sense of where furniture retailing is headed in the People’s Republic of China. It’s a reflection on how this nation’s entry into the world economy is playing out with its citizens.

Technically speaking, start around the corner on Tibet Road, in the Lu Wan district near the People’s Square in the heart of this city, which the Chinese government and history have designated a commercial hub, and now is a focal point for business investment in the PRC. That’s where you’ll find a Markor store that’s part of the Chinese manufacturer’s joint retail venture here with Ethan Allen, a venerable U.S. brand that’s building its presence in China through Markor, its major manufacturing partner in that country.

Turn right out of the Markor store, take your next right, and meander along a while. You’ll pass a number of other familiar furniture names, including Bo Concept, Danish manufacturer Club 8’s retail model; and Thomasville, which has cast its lot in this fashionable shopping district with local retailer Da Vinci, whose namesake, very high-end store is right across the street. (You’ll also be accosted along the way by friendly but insistent hawkers of the “furniture pavilion,” who promise extreme discounts on furniture.)

Take a look at prices on goods in the stores. This reporter was converting currencies in his head, but if you’re, say, a Thomasville retailer in the United States, rest assured that your Chinese counterparts are charging just as much to their shoppers for Hemingway or Bogart as you are.

Once out of the commercial district around People’s Square, Huai Hai Zhong is a tree-lined boulevard more reminiscent of Paris or Buenos Aires than what comes to mind when most people think of Asian cities, but make no mistake—walk into one of its furniture stores speaking English, and you’ll run smack into a language barrier. These retailers don’t cater to the tourist trade; they’re here for the locals.

Serving Two Masters

Downtown Shanghai is only a starting point for furniture retail activity in this mega-city. Ikea has a huge store located farther afield, and the just-opened JSWB Global Furnishings Center sets a new standard for sheer scale when it comes to furniture shopping. This 2.5 million-square-foot-plus shopping center located 30 minutes to an hour from downtown Shanghai, depending on time of day, represents a sea change for a lot of Chinese manufacturers that to date have focused on the export market.

At JSWB, Universal, Fine Furniture Design & Marketing, Fairmont Designs and other vendors with a stateside focus are hoping to grab an early share of a rising number of Chinese consumers able to pay U.S.-style retail prices, and who have a taste for the types of goods such vendors have long sold in the export market.

The center went so far as to host its own Shanghai International Furniture Fair concurrently with the Furniture China 2007 show in September at the New International Expo center in Shanghai’s Pudong district.

That kind of attention to the Chinese domestic market could pose issues for U.S. retailers, thought Jake Jabs, president of Thornton, Colo.-based American Furniture Warehouse. Looking at the 30,000-square-foot or so showrooms put up by vendors serving the U.S. market at the JSWB Center, he voiced concerns about the ability of those manufacturers to serve a potentially huge market in China while maintaining delivery to their traditional U.S. customers.

“I remember when people like Bassett and Thomasville began building (dedicated) distribution,” Jabs said. “That became their priority. If they’re opening their own stores here, can they take care of their customers?”

That shouldn’t be an issue as long as Chinese vendors to the U.S. market recognize the need to segregate their domestic and export business, said George Tsai, chairman of manufacturer Fairmont Designs.

After what Tsai called an “incubation” period from between 1998 and 2003, a boom in the housing market in China gave the company’s retail efforts there a big boost. Fairmont Designs now has a franchise of 115 gallery stores that currently account for around 15 percent of the manufacturer’s total business.

The company opened a 32,000-square-foot flagship store is in the JSWB Global Furnishings Center.

“It’s a different business group with its own dedicated plant and people,” he said. “The export and domestic groups learn from each other and share design resources, but they are completely separate. We went after the domestic business knowing it’s a completely different business requiring different people.”

Fairmont also operates a separate manufacturing facility for its domestic business, which allows it to adapt styles popular in the export market to incorporate scales and piece selection more appropriate to China.

“What you’re seeing in our stores are furniture styles found in the United States scaled for the China market,” Tsai said. “American-style furniture is readily acceptable by consumers here, and it’s eaten into the market share of the more European styles. ... The beauty of the Chinese business is that we’ve finally built a brand. We aren’t a brand in the United States, but we are in China.”

Adapting to a Market

In addition to an overall need for smaller scale, Chinese consumers look for products a manufacturer there might not develop for export, and domestic issues influence merchandising schemes. Retail presentations of juvenile product, for example, can be fairly small since the government limits each family to a single child.

“People also like to show off their electronic equipment, so you won’t see things like pocket doors in most cases on home entertainment,” Tsai said.

Fairmont’s China stores also show a lot of wardrobes styled for each collection.

“Not everyone here has walk-in closets,” Tsai pointed out. “We do also show some of our larger export range, which becomes our premier line domestically—some consumers here do have the houses to accommodate that scale.”

For manufacturers such as Fairmont Designs, though, such adaptation isn’t really an option, considering slow U.S. furniture sales and an increasingly difficult manufacturing environment at home. Furniture might have been good to China, but a huge trade surplus in the category, and furniture’s demands on the environment and land use have the government skewing incentives toward hi-tech, so-called “cleaner” industries.

“Many, many export factories are looking to the domestic market,” Tsai said. “A lot of factories are really in trouble from the anti-dumping (petition), and cuts in (value-added tax) rebates. Couple that with increased labor rates, and furniture factories have lost 18 percent in margins over the last couple of years.”

Chinese manufacturers can’t cut it as OEM producers alone for the U.S. market, according to not only Tsai, but also other companies in China.

“We have to be our own customers,” Tsai said of manufacturers in China that have to date focused on the export market, but are now expanding their domestic efforts. “You can no longer survive as an OEM manufacturer out of China.”

The implications also extend to both sides of the Pacific: “I do believe more manufacturers will buy into retailers and established brands in the United States,” Tsai said. “Just moving (production) to Vietnam is postponing that eventual need to increase business in the Chinese market.”