Furniture and building materials enter the era of brand competition

According to reports, in the first half of this year, the national real estate market showed a trend of rising volume and price. From January to May, the total sales area of ​​commercial housing in the country increased by 35.6% year-on-year. Affected by this, the market's demand for furniture and building materials will increase significantly. The Consumer Economic Research Department of the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China recently released the "2013 Furniture and Building Materials Consumer Market Development Report." The "Report" pointed out that with the improvement of people's living standards, the quality requirements for furniture and building materials consumption are getting higher and higher, and the awareness of consumer brands has increased, and the degree of attention to products has gradually become biased towards the brand, which also makes it amongst furniture and building materials companies. The competition turned to brand competition.

Larger consumer growth potential for customization Today's consumer demand for furniture and building materials is increasing. It not only considers the price, service, and quality of the product, but also pursues individuality, fashion, and convenience. At present, after 80 has become the main force of home decoration, so the consumer psychology after 80 has become an important factor affecting the entire furniture and building materials market consumption trends. 80 is the pursuit of a new generation of creative life, in the interior decoration, mix and match style, fashion style, alternative decoration have become the younger generation like decoration style. At the same time, consumers are no longer satisfied with batch-type, standardized furniture and building materials, but are more inclined to personalization and tailor-made products, which makes the overall custom furniture gradually become a popular consumer style. Especially the customization of furniture, personality, fashion, time saving, labor saving and other advantages, has gradually become the preferred mode of purchase for high-end consumers. With the increasing demand for customized furniture, a batch of **custom-made furniture companies have emerged on the market.

Taking Sofia, the leading brand of tailored wardrobe as a new segment of the home improvement industry, as an example, in 2001, the founder of the Sofia brand based on the needs of Chinese consumers, based on the concept of digesting and absorbing the sliding door of the closet, put the cabinet on the The advantages of sliding doors, hand-made wardrobes and finished wardrobes are effectively combined to create innovative wardrobes. Compared with traditional furniture, customizing more thinking in service, service-oriented, and serving as the backbone of the entire system. Custom furniture, in addition to improving the space utilization, function to meet the individual needs of consumers, the style can be exactly the same with the family decoration style, make the home harmonious and beautiful. Therefore, Sofia placed designers and home improvement personnel on the same level of emphasis, making Sofia's custom wardrobe a favor for consumers and maintaining an overall growth situation. In 2012, Sofia maintained growth in its main business revenue and profits, maintaining its leading position in the industry.

At present, the share of custom furniture in the entire furniture market is about 10%. As a new thing, its development space is still very large. Therefore, personalization has become a major feature of the furniture and building materials consumer market in 2013.

The brand awareness of consumption has been increasing for a long time. As a furniture and building material production country, China’s furniture production value accounts for 70% of the world’s total furniture production value. Although the Chinese furniture and building materials industry is a veritable large industry in terms of quantity, China’s exports are qualitatively correct. The level of furniture manufacturing has been able to reach the high-end level in Europe, but it has always lacked domestic famous, internationally-renowned brands.

As the level of household consumption continues to increase, consumer awareness of active consumption and rational consumption continues to increase. Consumers' attention to health and environmental protection has increased rapidly. In pursuit of a more refined life, more attention has been paid to the style and details of products, and products that are in harmony with home improvement styles have been more inclined to enhance the quality of life. At the same time, the era of "know licensing" purchase has come. Consumers are increasingly attaching importance to well-known brands, leading furniture and building materials companies to constantly adjust their corporate strategies and attach importance to brand building, so as to promote their own quality improvement and increase their added value. The enhancement of consumer brand awareness will push forward the furniture and building materials production enterprises into a new era of brand competition.

With the unrestricted expansion of information, it is not only the products that are displayed on the shelves, but also the brand's culture, value proposition and code of conduct. Among the furniture brands in China, the domestic brands of the flooring industry accounted for most of the domestic market share, and the export momentum was good. Among them, the iconic and living families are exemplary brand-building enterprises with representative significance.

At the earliest time, Shengxiang introduced the laminate flooring into the Chinese market, and now it has become a leader in the high-end brands and trends of the overall furniture industry in China. As of 2012, the company has accumulated over 200 million square meters of floorboard sales, accumulated more than 6 million customers nationwide, and consistently high-quality flooring and high-level satisfaction services, which have allowed the company to gain recognition and trust from its customers. It can be said that with 16 years of time, the icon bears the position of the iconic brand in all directions and establishes an unshakable leader in the industry.

In the flooring industry where the brand competition is fierce, under the background of highly homogenized products, the living family is a maverick and fast-growing style brand. Its success lies in the integration of culture into the shaping of floor brands.

The style of living home brands, labelled with quality and taste, has profound cultural connotations. Its products are based on different categories, based on different positioning, have different target consumer groups, meet the needs of different life styles (quality and taste), form a new business model with market competitiveness and exclusivity, and change the industry alone. The price competition in the industry ecology has also changed the consumer's traditional understanding of the floor, so that the floor has more "cultural" added value.

Green consumption has gradually become mainstream With the continuous improvement of consumers' awareness of green environmental protection, green environmental protection furniture and building materials have gradually become the mainstream of the industry. Furniture and building materials are one of the industries that rely heavily on resources. The resource conservation of the furniture and building materials industry is of great significance to the development of a conservation-oriented economy throughout the industry. In the field of furniture, environmental protection has always been one of the hot topics in the field of decoration. Now consumers are more demanding on environmental protection when they purchase furniture products. They will not only know the formaldehyde content of the products in detail, but also give priority to those products that have obtained the certification from Ten Ring and other green home materials and green home certification. People have been paying more and more attention to their own health, so when choosing furniture, they will pay special attention to the environmental protection of household products. In the field of building materials, more and more new materials for environmental protection and energy conservation are used in exterior decoration materials for home use. The 40 mm thick extruded insulation board, installed on the roof, can play a very good role in thermal insulation. The effect is several dozen times higher than that of unmounted ones. It can save a lot of electricity when air conditioners are opened in summer or winter. In addition, the use of new energy-saving materials such as autoclaved aerated concrete blocks, exterior wall sprays containing polyphenylene granules as insulation slurry, hollow double-glazed windows and doors, and fire and security doors provide a good environment for energy conservation and environmental protection.

Green environmental protection regulations are becoming more and more perfect. Green environmental protection has become a hot spot for consumption, and it also provides a vicious opportunity for counterfeit and inferior products to disturb the market, in order to promote green home production, promote industrial upgrading and development, guide green household consumption, and practice environmental protection. The responsibility and obligation to promote the sustainable development of social health. The China Green Home Environment Technology Working Committee (abbreviated as “Green Living Committee”) is a non-profit association that specifically plans, formulates, promotes, supervises, and organizes the implementation of China's green home environment-related industry standards, regulations, publicity, training, inspection, supervision, and arbitration. International cooperation and so on, they think that Chinese consumers build a true green, healthy and environmentally friendly home life, and practice the government to provide the people with a “better life” philosophy and goals.

In order to realize this concept, the Green Habitat Committee has carried out many concrete tasks in regulating industry standards, rectifying the market, guiding consumers to green consumption, recommending green household products to consumers, and mobilizing outstanding enterprises to actively participate in the promotion of green consumption. The company's positive response and strong support. For example, in August 2012, Green Habitat, a company focusing on green development in the household sector, established the Green Home Alliance. The Green Home Alliance is focused on “safe buy, healthy living” as its core goal. It is committed to creating a truly international synchronization for Chinese consumers. Green, healthy home life.

Although man-made panels have the green meaning of being sustainable and protecting forest resources, the impact of the quality of wood-based panels on indoor air quality must also arouse our concern, such as the release of harmful substances such as formaldehyde and VOCs from wood-based panels.

In order to make better use of man-made board as a green product and provide consumers with a more healthy and comfortable living environment, Green House Committee and related departments and enterprises concerned with green sheet and household products in the industry have jointly formulated the “Green Board Procurement Specification”. This standard puts forward higher requirements for the amount of formaldehyde released from indoor wood-based panel products. According to the standard, green sheet products are divided into 3 grades, G1 grade, G2 grade and G3 grade standards. In order to ensure the standards are feasible, Green House Committee is working with international authoritative certification body SGS to implement green house certification for companies and products that meet the “Green Board Procurement Standards”. Certified companies can add green house 3G logos to consumers. It is easy to purchase green sheet products that meet the standards based on the logo. At the same time, you can also check the authenticity of products through the Internet, 400 phones, etc.

In order to guide consumers' green consumption and protect the rights and interests of consumers, Green Habitat, together with experts from relevant departments such as the government, associations, and research institutions as well as the company's technical director level leaders, jointly researched and prepared the “Guidelines for Green Home Consumers”. It provides consumers with a set of authoritative green explanations to enable consumers to have a clearer understanding of green sheet and household products, and provides consumers with a practical buying guide for purchasing green home furnishing materials and green home furnishing products. At the same time, they recommend excellent green product manufacturers to consumers.

Man-made board is a new bright spot for consumption. Wood-based board has the green characteristics of improving timber utilization, protecting precious wood resources, and maintaining the sustainable development of forests. It is one of the main ways for the home building materials industry to promote green environmental protection. Moreover, home products are based on wood-based panels as the main raw material, especially in the premise that panel-type furniture occupies the mainstream market. The green development of wood-based panels plays a crucial role in the green environmental protection of the home appliance industry.

At present, more and more companies have begun to assume corporate social responsibility, and more and more plate manufacturers have started to advocate green environmental protection. Taking Guangxi Xiangsheng Wood Industry Co., Ltd. as an example to build green sheets and promoting green consumption, the company advocates the concept of green consumption and develops green sheets as a breakthrough for the company's development. It always adheres to the “high-end, high-quality, and environmentally-friendly” green product positioning and adheres to the market. Provide the most high-end, best quality, greenest green products and provide environmentally friendly and healthy particle board products. Xiangsheng took the company's 280,000 mu of FSC-FMCOC-certified wood as the main raw material, which ensured the green environmental protection of raw materials from the source. At the same time, strict quality and green environmental protection requirements are put forward for the entire industrial chain of the product production process, and the product qualification rate reaches 98%. Xiangsheng continuously innovates and researches and develops particleboard products with environmental protection, function and differentiation, and aims to achieve the most stringent international standards such as CARBP2 and Japan F, ensuring that the company always masters the cutting-edge technologies of the industry and has greater market competition. The advantages.

Internet consumption patterns are in the ascendant E-commerce will provide a way for the furniture and building materials industry to explore new business models. From 2012 to early 2013, the furniture and building materials industry has frequently gone through the news of “water-related” e-commerce for enterprises, exploring new business models and advancing with the times to become the only way for the survival and development of furniture and building materials companies. The traditional domestic furniture marketing model is the use of independent stores, national large-scale chain, local chain, large supermarkets and other channels for sales. Relying on e-commerce, the furniture and building materials industry has obtained new effective marketing models to meet the consumption needs of a large number of young people. E-commerce represents the maximization of the use of limited resources by modern science and technology, satisfying the needs of consumers as much as possible. Although furniture and building materials are involved in e-commerce is being explored stage, small furniture and building materials products are sold better, not necessarily all the goods are suitable; furniture, building materials products are large amounts of slow consumer goods, product services, brands, performance and environmental protection are required Experience can be better understood; furniture building materials products are sold to consumers are semi-finished products, all require on-site installation, the product placed in a different style of decoration presents a different effect. Therefore, the current mode of e-commerce in the furniture and building materials industry is still the way to integrate online ** shop inspections. E-commerce needs a lot of manpower and material resources to solve the late installation and after-sales service. However, overall, with the development of the Internet of Things, mobile payment, and cloud computing, the future of consumer resources will be more concise and convenient. In the future, the furniture and building materials industry will usher in greater opportunities for transformation and upgrading.

The market potential of tertiary and tertiary markets is huge With the introduction of real estate control policies, the operation of furniture stores in Beijing and Shanghai is shrinking. In contrast, sales in the third and fourth-tier markets are growing. In the past, most brands of furniture companies focused on Beijing and Shanghai as their market development priorities. However, many furniture stores in the first and second tier cities not only experienced high wholesale and retail prices, but also suffered from high rents, high labor costs, and high costs. In particular, the introduction of real estate control policies has increased the uncertainty of furniture and building materials consumption in first and second tier cities. At the same time, the third and fourth tier cities have ushered in the peak season of the home market, repeatedly set a miracle in the industry sales, and become a new consumer point of the furniture market. In 2012, the market sales of first and second-tier cities fell by as much as 50%, while the sales growth of furniture companies with low-end and mid-tier companies reached 120%. For example, the Icon Group has been paying special attention to the tertiary and tertiary markets, rapidly expanding its franchise to more than 3,000 stores, and rapidly occupying China's first-tier and even third- and fourth-tier cities. At present, there are about 150 million households in the tertiary and quartile markets represented by prefecture-level cities and some economically developed counties and cities. According to calculations, if these household purchase requirements are calculated at 30%, the market capacity will reach 150 billion yuan. And as the income level of these urban residents rises, so does the purchasing power. Driven by the accelerating urbanization process, the market potential of three or four cities is gradually being transformed into real purchasing power. Therefore, the development potential of the 34 furniture and building materials market will continue for some time to come.