Who “Killed” The Home Store?

Sanitary News

Zhang Quanling said, “When the times throw you away, they won’t even say goodbye to you”. If you go into the current home furnishing stores, you will find that what he said is true. Scattered customers, vacant stores, the entire home furnishing stores are shrinking.

 

01

Who “Killed” The Home Store?

Home Furnishings Stores Have Been Abandoned By The Times.

The reasons for the general plight of the home industry today are complex.

1, The Advent Of The Era Of Full Renovation

Full furnishing has become a trend as governments around the world have raised standards for new home delivery. According to a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 70% of the current demand for home improvement comes from new developments, and many fixed furniture are centrally purchased by developers, part of the end consumption demand is decreasing.  Home improvement companies are turning to developers or Internet home improvement companies that provide a full range of customized services, thus bypassing traditional home furnishing stores.

2, Preference Shift Of Post-90s Home Improvement Consumers

Home furnishing consumers are getting younger and younger, and the new generation of home furnishing consumers have undergone drastic changes in user habits. They are more inclined to buy some of their furniture and soft furnishings online, and the impact of the e-commerce boom on traditional offline home furnishing stores is hard to resist.

Image source: Post-90s Tmall’s Livability Trend Guide

At present, the 90s and 95s, these “Internet aborigines” are gradually becoming the backbone of home improvement consumption, and the previous generation is different. They are used to the new retail experience of online and offline connectivity. “It’s not a must to visit the stores in person. Offline experience and online fragmented shopping is the norm.

3, Low-Frequency Home Consumption

Home consumption is a low-frequency consumption, and furniture is a large non-standard item. Decoration once enough for many years, especially some fixed furniture, but the unit price is very high.

4, Real Estate Boom Waning

The overall economic situation is now grim, and the first sentence at the beginning of the fourth part of this year’s central bank report is that the global recession this year is a foregone conclusion. More than 170 of the 189 member countries of the International Monetary Fund have negative per capita income growth.

On the contrary, domestic GDP in the first quarter fell 6.8 percent year-on-year, and investment in real estate development fell 7.7 percent. The revenue from land sales in the first quarter fell by 7.9% year-on-year, and it has become an indisputable fact that the real estate industry is sluggish.

The real estate market downturn, real estate control policies not only cause tremendous pressure on the real estate itself, but also on the real estate downstream of the furniture, bathroom and even kitchen and bath throughout the pan-home industry have an impact.The second half of 2017 began to home furnishing industry revenue and profit growth overall began to decline, but also made to make it in the product and business model had to change.

5, Under The Epidemic, There Is Nothing Left.

Every year in March of the furniture exhibition, is the dealer focused on switching brands, but also the furniture factory focused on optimizing the dealer period. The home furnishing industry “three gold and silver four” offline sales season, was a sudden epidemic smashed to pieces.

The dealers are no longer considering which brand to switch, but to withdraw directly from the store, resulting in home furnishings stores empty rental rate will hit a record high. Renovation projects have been postponed, furniture stores are empty, and home building materials exhibitions have been canceled.

According to data released by the Circulation Development Department of the Ministry of Commerce and the China Building Materials Circulation Association, in January 2020, the national building materials and home furnishing boom index BHI was 78.62, down 20.74 points from the previous year.

The national above-scale building materials and home stores in January sales of 60.22 billion yuan, down 33.57% from a year earlier. In 2020, empowerment is a high-frequency word in the furniture industry. For home stores without the ability to empower, it is possible that they will not survive 2020.

 

02

There Are Only Failing Companies, Not Failing Industries

Now comes the transition period in the home industry. There are two main factors affecting the transition: consumer market and sales situation.  First, the entire consumption structure is changing, the original consumer demand is more unified. Now China’s consumer market began to stratify, personalized needs are also more prominent, the original service unified market retail format is difficult to adapt to the changes in the consumer market.

In addition, the form of retail is also changing, the original single to-store retail scenario has become the current to-home, O2O, community retail and other new forms more and more. It needs to be adjusted from the original function of the store to meet the convenience of the user to buy.

China’s home furnishing market still has a vast space for growth, and the home furnishing market has become a trillion dollar track. The person in charge of Jiyoujia said in an interview, “The online and offline channels will be calculated at the same time, China’s home furnishing market size of the soft furnishings alone is about 5 trillion. Now the online channel’s share has not reached 20% -30%, the upside is very big”.

From the time dimension, China’s home furnishing market also has a very strong after the toughness. After each challenge, the overall competitiveness of the home furnishing market will leap forward a big step, which may be the role of the big waves.

There is only the closure of enterprises, there is no collapse of the industry, as long as there is continuous innovation mode. The future of the entire field of home furnishing, will certainly come out of the transformation of successful enterprises.

 

03

Run Faster, Run To Full Renovation And Online

In the face of dramatic changes, home stores are responding with multiple strategies, embracing online and fully furnished, as well as offline hypermarket transformation as a pressing need.

IKEA is the king of the global home market share and the most successful home retailer. In 2016, IKEA’s operating income and net profit reached €35.1 billion and €4.2 billion respectively, up 7.3% and 20% year-on-year respectively.

However, in the most valued Asian market, from 2016 to 2018, IKEA China delivered three consecutive years of declining sales growth rates. Times have changed, and IKEA, which has been in China for two decades, is waking up like a dream.

The growth of customized products and building materials in each home improvement category has been bright, and customized products are now a potential category for online development. Smaller family structure and pressure on housing prices make small housing more popular, to meet the individual needs of the gradual rise of custom furniture.

Although the current custom furniture is mainly concentrated in the field of cabinets, wardrobes, etc., but the future will gradually expand to the field of whole house furniture.

The newcomers Juran Home and Red Star Macalline are at the key point of transformation. Offline, traditional retail channel giants such as Gome and Suning have entered the home furnishings industry and have their own home improvement companies, as well as layout of home retailing. Offline, e-commerce platforms such as Jingdong and Ali are exploring the e-commerce of the home industry.

After cooperating with Ali, Juran Home is transforming into an integrated mall, moving towards big consumption, extending the industry chain around “home”, preparing to develop into imported food supermarkets, fitness centers, senior care products supermarkets, children’s entertainment, cinemas, digital intelligence and other forms of business in addition to traditional home furnishing stores.

Red Star Macalline and Juran Home are also working hard to get rid of their “home mall” status. In MALL mode, in addition to furniture and building material merchants, there are also catering, accommodation, finance, office, entertainment, sports and leisure facilities, forming a multi-format coverage.

The home furnishing market is experiencing an overall stall, the home furnishing stores are showing the Ether effect, and the reshuffle phase is particularly challenging for small and medium-sized stores. Home furnishing stores are no longer as simple as enclosure, leasing, diversion and rent collection.

Future stores will play a more important role, but also to be made up a lot of lessons, such as home improvement market, which is the logistics, installation, maintenance and other home services, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Change is the generality.

As the home furnishing industry chain on the home market, is undergoing a bitter transformation, “to live” is stressed again.