Archives January 2018

Conference Meeting Table

China International Furniture Fair 2018 Invitation from MIGE

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |12 Comments | News

The China International Furniture Fair (CIFF) is an international furniture fair.

The China International Furniture Fair (CIFF) will last for 4 days from Wednesday, March 28 to Sunday, March 31, 2018 in Guangzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center.

As an office furniture enterprise, we, Mige office furniture, will take place in such a fabulous expo, showing our novel unsold furniture.

Welcome to Mige office furniture expo! Our booth number is 5.2A18.

Contact our customer service or leave a message on our website provided that you are interested in it.

We will send an invitation to you immediately after receiving your message.

office desk

Malaysia International Furniture Fair 2018 Invitation from MIGE

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |14 Comments | News

The Malaysia International Furniture Fair (MIFF), the largest show of its kind in South-east Asia, is set to feature a greater variety of new products from a wide range of suppliers.

The Malaysia International Furniture Fair (MIFF) will last for 4 days from Thursday, March 8 to Sunday, March 11, 2018 at Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

As an office furniture enterprise, we, Mige office furniture, will take place in such a fabulous expo, showing our novel unsold furniture.

Welcome to Mige office furniture expo! Our booth number is 2C03.

Contact our customer service or leave a message on our website provided that you are interested in it.

We will send an invitation to you immediately after receiving your message.

office desk

Use markets to explore the gems and furniture opportunities

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |0 Comments | News

Like most of you, I guangzhou office furniture company love to walk through furniture stores – big ones and small ones.

And like you, I have noticed that we have more than a little redundancy in our styles. This is more obvious in case goods, in my opinion, although some stores have a tendency to have too many of a single solid color in upholstery. Perhaps it is understandable in leather and motion, but in fabric, it is less necessary.

If you are touring the largest of our furniture retailers, the redundancy is understandable. They are going after the broadest cross-section of American consumers and must choose styles with the broadest appeal. Also, because of being so large and needing to be supplied in such huge quantities, they must buy from a limited number of vendors who can meet their needs.

I think we all would be surprised at the number of containers that flow through Ashley, Rooms To Go, Value City and our other largest stores, and at how many of them share the same vendors, including Ashley, of course.

Size can have huge advantages in leverage to get the best prices, best shipping rates, etc., but it can be a disadvantage if you want to reach different, more specialized consumer markets.

If you take the time to visit some of the smaller showrooms at markets – not just for accessories but for furniture, too – you will see attractive, creative designs that you are highly unlikely to find on the big stores’ retail floors.

This gives an advantage, in my mind, to the smaller retailer who can be very creative and innovative in terms of display and product mix. And smaller vendors would love to have the business, generally speaking.

If I were a small to mid-sized furniture store, I would much rather be an important customer to a number of small to mid-sized vendors than to be a speck on the wall to a large vendor who really prefers the huge orders.

Think about this as you China office partition manufacturer wander through the Las Vegas or High Point markets. Yes, it’s fun to see what the larger vendors are offering, but take time every market to find furnishings that might otherwise go unfound. Be a furniture explorer!

office desk

Severe winter weather puts strain on furniture traffic

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |1 Comments | News

Freezing temperatures, heavy snowfall, polar vortexes and bomb cyclones are typically bad news for retailers. But guangzhou office furniture factory furniture stores in the North and Northeast appear to have weathered the recent round of extreme weather quite well … unless they happened to be based here in Erie, Pa., like John V. Schultz Furniture.

“We get a lot of snow in Erie, so we’re used to it, but nothing like what we experienced,” said President John Schultz. A bad band set up over Lake Erie pushed in from the west “and just clobbered us,” he said.

“It started on Christmas Eve and was a complete whiteout all Christmas Day and pretty much the day after.” By that time, Erie had recorded nearly 6 feet of snowfall, shattering the record for a two-day period (among other city and state records).

“And that was on top of what we had already gotten for the month of December,” Schultz said. “It was cold so we didn’t really have any melt.”

The weather continued to be miserable through New Year’s Day (the snowfall total rose to nearly 7 feet since Christmas), so business was “non-existent” during one of the retailer’s typically busiest times of year. Schultz estimated sales were down for the period between Christmas and New Year’s Day by more than 70%.

And the store struggled to make deliveries on its written business because the streets in Erie were impassable, except in a few cases south of the city where Schultz managed to get trucks to the interstate.

It’s not exactly how Schultz hoped to end the old year or start the new one, but he’s hoping to make up a little ground.

“We’re routing in some more promotions now, starting next week,” he said. “We’re going to hit the Martin Luther King weekend hard, offering free delivery and things like that to try to pick up some of that business.”

He’s also counting on the typical cabin fever to set in and with that lift sales, although he added that he knows you never really get it all back.

More manageable

Elsewhere in the North following in the early days of 2018, the snow and below-freezing temperatures were uncomfortable but much more manageable, several retailers reported.

Detroit picked up some snow after New Year’s Day, but it was the cold that really halted traffic, said Tom Lias, president and CEO of Farmington, Mich.-based Gorman’s Home Furnishings & Interior Design.

It’s the kind of cold – 8 degrees below freezing – that does slow traffic, Lias said. Unless clients were in the middle of projects with the mid-priced to upscale retailer, they were quick to cancel appointments, and even some in mid-project called to postpone.

“We had a good New Year’s Day, but it tightened up right after that, and the first week of the year started a little slower than a year ago,” he said.

That said, Lias noted he was already seeing an uptick in traffic Sunday and Monday as the severe cold spell broke.

Another positive: The worst of it fell midweek, normally a slower traffic time. “If you’re going to have a cold snap or snow storm, hope for Tuesday or Wednesday,” he said.

In Boston, Larry Rubin, CEO of the seven-store Bernie & Phyl’s Furniture, agreed with that sentiment. His market was hit with much more snow Thursday, Jan. 4, and severe cold temperatures followed. The retailer closed all stores Thursday and saw a roughly 5% sales decline for the week, mostly attributable to that closing, but “business really was not that bad,” he said.

“I expected it to be worse than it was,” Rubin said. “Probably 50% of your business is done on the weekend, so if you have a storm that falls on the weekend, I think it hurts you a lot worse,” even more so when it falls on a holiday week, he said. “We had a pretty good weekend, and it was really freezing temperatures, so people still got out and shopped.”

About an hour west of Boston in Worcester, Mass., the weather was severely cutting into traffic at Rotmans, but the average ticket during the worst of it jumped about 50%.

“The consumers that came in were basically higher income and looking for products that were more expensive,” said Steve Rotman, president and CEO. “Also, they tended to shop more. Rather than looking for one or two items, they were looking for a multitude of items, and the closing rate was much higher.”

And because there were fewer consumers in the store, salespeople were giving them more time, which signaled to Rotman that maybe the store is understaffed normally (since the added time was leading to larger tickets).

The cold spell ended Sunday, Jan. 8, and things are warming up nicely,  China office chair manufacturer Rotman said. He closed just one day during that first week of January and like Bernie & Phyl’s, that did affect sales, but “overall our figures were up because we were very aggressive in advertising.”

office desk

Tempur Sealy says furniture price increases take effect in March

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |0 Comments | News

Tempur Sealy, guangzhou office furniture supplier, which held off on price increases last year, announced “commodity driven” price increases that will go into effect on March 6.

The increases will impact all Sealy mattresses, all Stearns & Foster mattresses, Tempur Pedic Cloud Supreme Breeze mattresses, and Tempur-Pedic flat foundations, said Steve Rusing, senior vice president of U.S. sales for Tempur Sealy.

“Major component raw material costs for foam, steel, upholstery and wood have increased significantly in the last 24 months, and are expected to rise further in 2018,” Rusing said in a recent letter to the company’s dealers. “While Tempur Sealy has avoided a price increase up to this point, through its own productivity initiatives and cost controls, these actions alone are not enough to offset rising costs. Thus Tempur Sealy is instituting a price increase to offset commodity increases so that we can continue to invest in our products and marketing efforts.”

Sealy and Stearns & Foster queen-size sets retailing for $1,899 and below will see a wholesale price increase of $25 and a retail increase of $50. Sets retailing for $1,900 and above will see a wholesale price increase of $65 and a retail increase of $150, the company said.

Tempur-Pedic Cloud Supreme Breeze mattresses will see a wholesale price increase of $90 and a retail increase of $200. Tempur-Pedic twin flat foundations will see a wholesale price increase of $15 and a retail increase of $25, while Tempur-Pedic full and queen flat foundations will see a wholesale price increase of $25 and a retail increase of $50, China office sofa manufacturer Rusing said.

office desk

Social media tops list for purchase furniture inspiration

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |0 Comments | News

In the early stages of the decision-making process, guangzhou office furniture provider consumers look for inspiration. It is the brand’s role to provide such inspiration via content, so brands need to be where consumers are.

Traditional social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are cited by 39% of consumers for inspiring purchases, according to data from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Total Retail 2017 report. Individual retailer websites are cited by 37%, followed by price-comparison websites with 35% and multi-brand websites with 32%. Visual social networks, such as Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and YouTube, came in fifth per the PwC report.

In research by ViSenze titled “Visual Commerce Report Retail,” Facebook was ranked first among social media users for being the primary platform to inspire a buying decision at 32%. Pinterest was second at 16%, followed by Instagramnatn12% and Snap chat at 2%. Thirty-eight percent of social media users cited no platform for inspiring purchases. The research did not account for other platforms, including Twitter.

Social media greatly impacts purchasing decisions as seen above, and one-third of all online purchases originate on social platforms each month. “Social media, as well as the increasing amount of visual content available online, influences consumer purchase behavior more every day,” said Oliver Tan, CEO and co-founder of ViSenze.

The ViSenze research found that three-quarters of consumers are inspired to purchase by image and video content online, and almost half of consumers watch video content on retailers’ websites while shopping. This highlights the increasing importance of video format and how it is becoming a significant opportunity to connect with consumers.

Google has been tracking a steady rise in visual searchers via Google images and YouTube for product-related information. Product images are the most used shopping feature, according to consumers who search and shop on their smartphones a minimum of one time per week.

Google’s research agrees with China conference desk manufacturer ViSenze that video is a top format to inspire consumers. According to Google research, more than 50% of Internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store.

office desk

Younger furniture consumers stepping up their store visits

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |0 Comments | News

As a new year begins, guangzhou office furniture manufacturer I bring you some comforting news: Physical retail is not dead. Nor is it dying. Nor, very significantly, is it being abandoned by Millennials, those much-discussed consumers who are turning the world on its head, or so it is said.

This good news comes to us from the respected National Retail Federation, and design guru Connie Post shared some of the highlights at the recent Furniture Today Leadership Conference.

The conference, attended by a bevy of top mattress and sleep accessory producers and retailers, delivered several endorsements of the vitality of brick-and-mortar retailing. One came from Post herself, who has spent a career bringing excitement and fun to home furnishings stores with her fresh and innovative designs.

“New always wins,” Post said at the conference, repeating one of her design mantras. That point was hammered home as Post showed us room after room of new designs that injected energy into furniture and mattress departments.

The NRF research shared by Post notes that younger consumers embrace physical retail when it offers a new experience or is more convenient.

The research looked at Millennial and Gen Z consumers (Gen Z is the generation that follows Millennials) and found that about half of them are shopping physical stores more than they were a year ago. About one-third of those consumers said they are visiting physical stores at about the same pace as a year ago.

Only 17% of the Millennial/Gen Z respondents say they are visiting physical stores less often than they did a year ago, the NRF research says.

These findings refute the notion that most Millennials are abandoning physical stores and doing most of their buying online, and that’s good news for the mattress industry, where brick-and-mortar sales make up the vast majority of the retail business.

Why are Millennial/Gen Z consumers stepping up their visits to physical stores? The top reason is that a new retail store or shopping center has opened near them (cited by 52% of the younger consumers). But it’s interesting that 45% of those consumers say they are visiting stores more often than in the past to pick up items they bought online, a click-and-brick model. One opportunity with those consumers is to see if those consumers might want to pick up something else when they arrive at the store.

So, as we stand at the starting line for a new year, we can be confident that in an industiy that is undergoing rapid change, we aren’t losing all of those younger, tech-savvy consumers to the Internet.

Make no mistake about it, the online world is growing in importance. But it’s nice to know that many Millennials are actually spending more time in stores now than they were a year ago, for a number of reasons.

A good new year’s resolution would be to spruce up those mattress stores and departments, making China filling cabinet manufacturer them more inviting to consumers of all ages.

File Storage Cabinet

Outdoor furniture decorating styles vary by generation and region

by migeof |January 31, 2018 |0 Comments | News

Significantly more Baby Boomers than Millennials, 65% vs. 51% guangzhou office furniture company, describe their outdoor decorating style as traditional, according to a recent study from Furniture Today’s sister publication Casual Living. Despite the difference, traditional is the top outdoor style across all generations.

Just 1% of Baby Boomers describe their style as contemporary or modern, significantly less than Millennials at 13% and Generation X at 10%. For Generation X, modern style is tied with tropical looks as the second-most chosen style at 10%. Tropical is the second-most popular for Millennials at 16%, and contemporary/modern is third at l3%.

Sixteen percent of Baby Boomers identified with a style that was not listed, such as rustic or Americana, the second-highest choice among the age group. That number is 10% more than Millennial respondents that reported the same.

While traditional is still the top decorating style for consumers with outdoor spaces in all areas of the U.S., 64% of respondents from the Northeast describe it as their outdoor decorating style compared with 58% of the South and 56% of both the West and Midwest. At 4%, significantly less of the Northeast indicates that tropical is their outdoor style of choice compared to 14% of both the South and Midwest.

When shopping for outdoor furniture, three-fourths of respondents say that they consider style and design, which is tied with price as the No.1 consumer concern in outdoor furniture shopping.

Generationally, that is not always the case. Although Millennials are the most mindful of outdoor furniture design of all generations, more of them (81%) look for the best price over their preferred style at 78%. Generation X considers design and style just slightly more than price, 73% vs. 72%. Style and price are equally important to Baby Boomers, at 74%.

Price is also more important than design for consumers in the South, at 78% vs. 75%, and the Midwest, at 80% vs. 72%. Of all U.S. regions, the Northeast China negotiation desk manufacturer considers style the most important: Seventy-seven percent of North-eastern consumers say that they consider design and style when looking to purchase new outdoor furniture.