German furniture trade achieved more sales in 2021, but will it be unsustainable in 2022?

Since the coronavirus pandemic, Germans have once again invested more in their homes. As a result, the furniture trade is booming.

In 2021 , furniture sales in Germany totaled 35.93 billion euros , a 1.6% increase in total sales compared to 35.36 billion euros in 2020. In addition, since furniture stores were closed for several months during the epidemic , online furniture trade also achieved a corresponding increase.

In terms of online trade, in 2021 , Germany's online furniture sales reached 4.72 billion euros , an increase of about 16% over the previous year , and only 4.07 billion euros in 2020 .

Among furniture products , kitchen furniture (up 2.1 percentage points to 32.5%) and office furniture (up 1.0 percentage points to 23.4%) grew rapidly , while soft furniture ( 5.9%) and mattresses (4.4%) remained stable. Other furniture (including furniture accessories, household furniture and small furniture) fell 3.1 percentage points, but still accounted for 33.8% of the trade volume .

Although the German furniture industry achieved more sales in 2021, online furniture retailer Westwing said that the furniture industry continued to be affected by supply chain difficulties and generally high inflation in 2022. The company achieved sales of 111 million euros in the first quarter of 2022, a year-on-year decrease of 20%.

In addition to weak market conditions and subdued consumer sentiment, Westwing must contend with high fulfillment costs due to lower utilization of its expanded warehouse infrastructure and continued high costs for temporary storage of large volumes of inventory.

However, on the consumer side, demand remains high . According to a YouGov study, 44% of German consumers plan to buy living room furniture in the next 12 months. This shows that there is still a lot of consumption potential in the furniture industry that has not been released.

YouGov research shows that most Germans (52%) would order furniture from an online store if there was a cheaper offer online . 41% said they would order it online if they had previously viewed or tried the furniture in a store, and a third (34%) would if the item was only available online .

This shows that a large number of consumers are willing to buy furniture through the Internet, and there is still a larger market for German furniture in 2022. However, cost issues are increasingly becoming one of the issues that German consumers have to consider when buying furniture.

Germany

furniture