According to a recent report released by the German Furniture Industry Association (VDM/VHK), in the first half of 2022, the sales of German furniture manufacturers increased by 13.4% year-on-year to about 9.5 billion euros (about 64.85 billion yuan).
The association noted that the increase in furniture sales largely reflected higher material costs.
In the first six months of this year, against the backdrop of strong winter demand, domestic sales were up 13.8% and export sales were up 12.6%, given the high order backlog at the end of 2021.
Judging from the sales data for the first half of the year, most of the various segments of the German furniture industry achieved significant sales growth, except for the mattress industry, which reported a slight decline in sales.
Between January and June 2022, sales of other furniture (including living room, dining room and bedroom furniture) and furniture accessories, the largest segment of the furniture industry, rose by 17.1% to 3.3 billion euros; sales in the kitchen furniture industry rose strongly by 12.4%, amounted to approximately 3.2 billion euros.
The office furniture industry grew by 10.9%, with sales of approximately 1.06 billion euros; the manufacturers of shops and other contract furniture increased sales by 13% to 968 million euros; the upholstered furniture manufacturers saw the highest sales increase, which increased by 19.1 % to 577 million euros. In contrast, the mattress industry, which has the smallest market share in the furniture industry, saw sales fall by 7.1 percent to 336 million euros.
In terms of individual export markets, the top ten destinations for German furniture exports are mainly Europe and the United States. Among them, France still ranks first, exporting furniture worth 710 million euros, but this is down 2.8% from the first half of last year.
In addition, among the top ten export markets, the US market has the highest growth rate, up 25.8% year-on-year to 145 million euros, and the United States is by far the most important sales market for "Made in Germany" furniture outside Europe.
Although China will remain the second largest non-European export market for German furniture in 2022, German furniture exports to China fell by 10.4% in the first half of the year. In addition, German furniture exports to Russia have fallen by 29% so far this year due to the Russia-Ukraine incident.
On the import side, German furniture imports rose by 13.5% to 5.8 billion euros in the first half of 2022. Among them, China's status as the most important furniture country of origin is further expanding, exporting nearly 1.9 billion euros of furniture to Germany. It was followed by Poland, but its total exports to Germany fell by 26.2%.
Looking at the employment data of the furniture industry, Germany currently has 451 furniture manufacturing units with more than 50 employees, employing a total of 78,712 people, a slight decrease of 0.2% over the previous year, but overall, the employment rate in the German furniture sector has so far remained constant.
Looking ahead to the second half of the year, the association noted that German furniture makers cited increased material costs and the delivery capacity of upstream suppliers as the top challenges, followed by energy supply and rising energy costs. In view of this, the association expects that due to price effects, sales in the German furniture industry as a whole will decline slightly in 2022, with sales rising by 6% to 8%, and annual sales are expected to reach 18.8 billion euros. a