People's Daily Overseas Edition: Furniture Industry Presents "Young State"

As a people's livelihood industry, the furniture industry has great potential to promote consumption. In recent years, it has been highly valued by the state. A series of policies and measures to promote the high-quality development of the industry and promote furniture consumption have been introduced, and continue to make great efforts. The China Furniture Association actively serves the country and the government, researches and proposes policy recommendations, and plays an active role in the introduction of relevant policies. Recently, Tu Qi, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Furniture Association, accepted an exclusive interview with "People's Daily Overseas Edition" to introduce the current new achievements and future trends in the development of the furniture industry.

On July 15, the full page of "People's Daily Overseas Edition" reported the development achievements of the furniture industry in creating new consumption scenes, embracing digital transformation, and exploring the new model of "going out to sea. Tu Qi, vice chairman and secretary-general, said that as a traditional industry, the furniture industry has paid great attention to digital transformation in recent years, realizing efficient coordination and management of the supply chain. At the same time, more and more e-commerce companies are cooperating with furniture factories to promote product development and innovation, and accelerate the construction of brand product systems. (Full text below)

 

Create a New Scene of Consumption and Embrace Digital Transformation
Furniture industry presents a "young state"

 

 

On April 27, workers made furniture on the automatic production line of the digital workshop in the Meike Digital Innovation Art Park in Nankang District, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province.

Photo by Zhu Haipeng (People's Vision)

 

On May 31, citizens visited and bought their favorite household products at the Huaxia Home Expo of Suzhou International Expo Center in Suzhou Industrial Park, Jiangsu Province.

Photo by Zhang Feng (People's Vision)

 

Furniture from the Ming and Qing dynasties on display at the Summer Palace Museum in Beijing, May 23.
Photo by Fan Jiashan (People's Vision)

 

Wearing VR glasses, selecting custom furniture solutions; using "smart" equipment, design drawings quickly become physical furniture; with the help of cross-border e-commerce, large pieces of furniture accelerate across the ocean ...... In recent years, furniture design, production, sales and other links continue to refresh and upgrade, the furniture industry presents a "young state".

Tu Qi, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Furniture Association, told reporters that furniture companies aim at new consumer demand, promote digital transformation, accelerate the expansion of overseas markets, and maintain the development of the furniture industry.

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to May this year, the operating income of furniture manufacturing enterprises above designated size was 252.91 billion billion yuan, an increase of 5.9 percent over the same period last year; the total profit was 10.81 billion billion yuan, an increase of 18.5 percent over the same period last year.

Focus on new consumer demand

Through product innovation, furniture companies continue to meet and stimulate new consumer demand, so that traditional industries coruscate new vitality.

Bazhou City, Hebei Province is one of the six regional furniture industry characteristic bases in China. Bazhou Hongjiang Furniture Co., Ltd. was founded in 1995, mainly produces rattan chair, swing, hanging basket and other rattan art outdoor furniture. "At first, the company produced 'staple goods 'and could only win the market at low prices." Hongjiang furniture general manager Tian Jiang told reporters.

In 2016, Hongjiang Furniture cooperated with well-known domestic designers to establish a 1000-square-meter brand design research institute to conduct in-depth research on new market consumer demand and research and development of new products.

With the rise of leisure vacation travel, many people choose to come to hotels or vacation villas, hold up umbrellas in the courtyard, and have tea and chat with family and friends. The designers of Hongjiang Furniture Brand Design and Research Institute found that there was no shade around the sunshade, and the shading effect and privacy were not good. Therefore, they designed the "Twisted Vine Leisure Pavilion", which is woven into the fence of the pavilion with rattan, which is not only ventilated but also protects privacy. "According to market feedback, the pavilion is constantly iteratively upgraded: installing solar photovoltaic panels to facilitate outdoor electricity; installing smart lights that can be manipulated by mobile phone APP..." Tian Jiang said that this pavilion has become the company's best-selling product.

In recent years, the furniture consumption market has shown many new trends, which provides a direction for the product innovation of furniture enterprises."

The concept of "big home" consumption is becoming popular. Home consumption covers home appliances, furniture, home textiles, home improvement and other fields. The "big home" model is to provide consumers with one-stop, integrated, full-scene home consumption solutions.

In March this year, Haier Zhijia's brand Three Wings Bird opened a "Super Experience Center" in Jinan, Shandong Province ". In the experience center, all products are placed in the bedroom, kitchen and other scenes, showing not a single product, but a space scene where furniture and appliances are integrated. Through the intelligent design program, users can generate a set of "smart home" solutions in 15 seconds.

Furniture personalized customization has become a hot consumer. In front of the cloud design platform of Daxin Home Industrial Design Center in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, a pair of post -90 s prospective newcomers searched for new house type maps in the system. After 10 seconds of system rendering, thousands of three-dimensional design schemes were displayed in turn. The two put on VR glasses and "put in" the new house, put in their favorite household items, feel different decoration styles, and choose their favorite decoration plans.

After screening, the two finally chose the new Chinese style scheme. After the contract is signed, the personalized design drawings will be systematically optimized into the best mass production instructions, which will be transmitted to the manufacturing and distribution platform through the Internet of Things, and can be shipped within 4 days.

"Young people are the main consumer of furniture, they have higher requirements for consumer convenience and experience." Tu Qi said that furniture brands continue to meet the personalized needs of consumers and enhance the consumption experience, such as opening AR preview function in online shopping malls and interacting with consumers through social media. With the acceleration of the aging process, aging furniture has become a new consumption hotspot. Massage chairs, health care mattresses, smart bathrooms and other products designed for the needs of the elderly are favored by elderly care institutions and elderly families. In July 2023, the Ministry of Commerce and other 13 departments issued the "Notice on Several Measures to Promote Household Consumption" proposed: "Improve the level of household aging. Formulate and publish the promotion catalogue of products for the elderly, and accelerate the formulation of general standards for household products suitable for aging design. Support enterprises to increase the research and development of household products suitable for aging appliances, furniture, bathing devices and other household products."

Dongpeng bathroom launched the "health station" space, equipped with human body induction ground, graphene thermal wall panels and other products, to create a bathroom environment suitable for the elderly. The intelligent old-age bed designed by Yadu furniture integrates health monitoring, automatic adjustment of mattress hardness, emergency call and other functions, and is connected with medical institutions and mobile phone APP of elderly families through Internet of Things technology. The massage sofa launched by Xilinmen Furniture is equipped with heating function, which can adjust the sitting and lying angle of the sofa with one key, bringing a more comfortable sitting and lying experience to the elderly.

Green environmental protection products are increasingly becoming the first choice of consumers, furniture board manufacturers to increase scientific and technological innovation, improve the environmental performance of products. At present, the widely used man-made board is made of glue to bond wood chips. Whether the board is environmentally friendly depends mainly on the quality of the glue. Guizhou Linsheng Wood Industry Co., Ltd. is a provincial-level specialized and special new "little giant" enterprise engaged in wood finishing. The enterprise has successfully developed a new type of environmentally friendly glue in cooperation with the academician team. Gui Baoyi, chairman of Linsheng Wood Industry, said: "Lin Star Xiangshan Ecological Board is the' fistic' product of the enterprise, and the formaldehyde content of the new environmental protection glue used in the board is very small."

At present, all kinds of aldehyde-free (low aldehyde) environmentally friendly wood-based panels are welcomed by the market. In 2023, the China Furniture Association issued 9 group standards such as "Green Design Product Evaluation Technical Specifications for Wood Furniture" to provide more complete standards for green design and manufacturing in the furniture industry.

"Furniture companies are promoting green transformation from all aspects of the product life cycle." Tu Qi introduced that in the 2023 Green Manufacturing List published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the list of pilot implementation of "Enterprise Green Code", many furniture enterprises such as Liming International Intelligent Furniture, Jinyu Tiantan (Tangshan) Wood Industry and Boloni Intelligent Technology were selected as green factories, and furniture equipment manufacturer Nanxing Equipment was selected as green supply chain management enterprises.

Application of "Intelligent Manufacturing" New Technology

Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, Nankang District is a large domestic furniture manufacturing base. In the Smart Home Industrial Park in St. Tysburg, Nankang District, sample development supervisor Kong Yi touched the button on the screen, and the mechanical arm kept dancing, cutting, sealing and punching pieces of wood......

Kong Yi has been engaged in furniture production for more than 20 years. Once, as a carpenter, his tools were saws and axes. Today, he operates intelligent production lines. "The current" intelligent "equipment can directly turn design drawings into furniture." Kong Yi told reporters that only when some distorted shapes are made and the machine is not fully competent, the carpenter needs to make fine adjustments and corrections.

Xu Bingzhou, head of the Jiangxi production base in St. Tysburg, is a "veteran" of the furniture production industry. He has a deep understanding of the transformation and upgrading of furniture production: "In the past, the production cabinets in our workshop were all processed by a single machine in a division of labor. The processes such as opening, edge sealing, punching and packaging were all manual, and the data of each process were not interoperable, the production efficiency was low, and the error rate was high."

In 2023, relying on the intelligent networking platform of Nankang furniture industry, St. Tysburg reengineered the traditional production process: after the enterprise received the order, the order-splitting software automatically analyzed the production and processing data of the order, and carried out scheduling, material preparation and material distribution, and then entered the full-automatic production link. A production line can "turn" 250 boards into 50 custom cabinets in one day, while the traditional production line takes 4 days. "With the help of big data integration and intelligent processing, St. Tysburg has realized standardized intelligent production of assembly lines, making furniture like cars, and at the same time supporting cloud ordering and personalized customization." Xu Bingzhou said.

In recent years, furniture manufacturers have generally introduced digital intelligent production lines to promote the transformation of furniture manufacturing to furniture "intelligent manufacturing. In the Oupai Home AI Factory located in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, global orders are continuously transmitted to the "Intelligent Brain" for drawing review 24 hours a day. After intelligent second-level sorting, orders are distributed to the five major production bases in Oupai.

The Gujia Home Furnishing Whole House Customized Production Research and Development Base in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province adopts industrial Internet technology, artificial intelligence and other technologies, and is equipped with magnetic levitation technology edge banding machines, mechanical arms and other equipment to realize fully automatic and flexible production. Thanks to this "intelligent manufacturing" model, the order production cycle of custom cabinet products has been shortened from 72 hours to 24 hours.

While improving production efficiency, it is important to reduce the error rate. In the production workshop of Mingzhu Furniture Co., Ltd., Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province, the plate also has an "ID card". This "ID" is a bar code. In the past, sorting plates relied on handwritten records or naked eyes to judge. Nowadays, each plate has a bar code, which is scanned and identified by a special scanner and then sent to different robot arms for sorting.

"In the sorting process, the error rate may reach about 60% simply using manual operation. After using intelligent production, the error rate drops to 3%-5%." Pearl furniture information center director Zhang Hao said.

"As a traditional industry, the furniture industry has paid great attention to digital transformation in recent years." Tu Qi introduced that in the production process, enterprises use digital construction to optimize the production process and realize large-scale flexible production; through the introduction of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning Management) system and supply chain management system, the efficient coordination and management of the supply chain can be realized, so as to improve the efficiency of material procurement, inventory management, logistics and distribution.

The transformation of furniture manufacturing industry has been supported by a series of policies. In August 2022, the "Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of the Home Furnishing Industry" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other four departments proposed: "Focus on key links such as R & D design, planning and scheduling, production operations, warehousing and distribution, quality control, marketing management, and supply chain management. Promote the in-depth application of 5G, industrial Internet, intelligent manufacturing and other technologies to achieve agile demand perception, agile supply, lean production, and fine management." In July 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other three departments issued the "Work Plan for Steady Growth of Light Industry (2023-2024)", which proposed to strengthen the transformation of digital empowerment, support the shoe-making, furniture, household appliances and other industries to carry out personalized customization and flexible production, and reshape the new mode of product production.

Exploring the new mode of "going to sea"

China is the world's largest furniture exporter, and "going out to sea" has become an important way for many furniture companies to cultivate new growth points.

In February of this year, the Olympic Village in Paris, France was officially delivered. The 3000 sets of sofas in the Olympic Village were produced by Ruili Home Textiles in Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province.

In 10 countries and more than 20 cities, the total flight mileage is more than 200000 kilometers-this is the "going to sea" data of Fei Zhongfu, chairman of Ruili Home Textile in 2023. With a lot of hard work, he came to orders from nearly 100 enterprises. Since the beginning of this year, the scope of Fei Zhongfu running orders and entering the market has expanded to more countries. Fei Zhongfu believes that behind the recognition of the international market is the pursuit of product innovation and quality improvement. In order to cope with the changes in demand, Ruili Home Textile has set up a studio in Italy to refine the design process. Cooperation with well-known German furniture enterprises to strengthen the research and development of new products; In domestic factories, we continuously optimize the process system of raw material procurement, production and processing, quality control, etc. to provide reliable quality assurance.

According to data from the General Administration of Customs, from January to May this year, the cumulative export volume of furniture and its parts products was 212.55 billion billion yuan, an increase of 20.5 percent over the same period last year. China's furniture exports showed a strong momentum. According to industry insiders, after years of deep cultivation in the European and American markets, many furniture companies have begun to turn their attention to emerging markets such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Since the beginning of this year, Incredible Home has officially opened its store in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, attracting well-known Chinese home brands to settle in. Zhibang Home Furnishing Brand Exclusive Stores have opened in Indonesia and Kuwait one after another. Sophia Home's High-end Custom Experience Hall in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam has officially opened......

Chinese furniture enterprises are exploring diversified "going to sea" paths, making concerted efforts online and offline, continuously building competitive advantages and opening up overseas consumer markets.

In May this year, China's cross-border e-commerce platform AliExpress officially entered the home decoration and other large category track. For a long time, the commodities of China's cross-border e-commerce platform are mainly small commodities and light packages, and the "going to sea" track of furniture and home decoration is still a blue ocean. In 2019, the Central China Operations Center, a subsidiary of The Times, began selling small household products on the AliExpress. In 2022, the company's main category to sofa, coffee table, TV cabinet, coat rack and other large furniture. "We have found our own international logistics channels, but the timeliness and follow-up services cannot keep up." One ninety times general manager Gao Yan told reporters.

After the opening of the AliExpress large-scale logistics line, merchants have joined the experience one after another, and the era of 19 is among them. "The bulk logistics line can carry up to 67kg of goods, so we can export more furniture products." Gao Yan said that large commodities can also adopt AliExpress semi-managed and full-managed business models, lowering the threshold for merchants to "go out to sea.

"Cross-border e-commerce has become a new driving force for furniture enterprises to go to sea. More and more e-commerce enterprises cooperate with furniture factories to promote product development and innovation and accelerate the construction of brand product system." Tu Qi said that in the process of "going to sea", enterprises can build overseas warehouses in the main target countries, and transfer and send goods from overseas warehouses according to the demand of orders, thus solving the problems of large volume of furniture products, high transportation costs, logistics, warehousing, after-sales and so on. This model reduces logistics costs while saving an average of about 20% of the cost of overseas direct purchases compared to single-piece direct mail. "going to sea" enterprises can also optimize warehousing, packaging, transportation routes and other aspects through supply chain integration, and strengthen communication among many countries and logistics nodes.