China\'s furniture industry has long passed the period of wild growth in short supply, and have entered the "meager profit" era of fierce market competition. "Consumers Mean everything", in the environment of rising costs and declining profits which is difficult for furniture factories,the traditional furniture chain is forced to upgrade in order to constantly meet the needs of consuming upgrades. Furniture manufacturing enterprises&suppliers and consumers are getting closer and closer.

Furniture manufacturers are paying attention to the supply chain problem

The modern education and management define the supply chain as ’Supply chain is overall network structure linked by suppliers ,manufacturers,distributors,retailers and final users,through which the material purchase,middle products and finished products and products delivery to consumers are carried on around the core enterprises by control of the information flow,logistics ,capital flow.’. In the traditional furniture supply chain, negative comments passing from manufacturers to consumers, will always experience the basic process "manufacturer - Dealer - store - consumer". In this process, the price rises a lot, the final market price is 4 to 6 times of the Ex price.But after the market promotion, anniversary promotion,and factory group purchase factory and other discounts, the final transaction price is often only half the price even lower, furniture factories and dealer net profit rate is at about 10%-20% or lower.A large number of costs are wasted in the marketing, logistics, store rental, inventory and other supply chain and other middle links.

In the consumer driven market environment, especially the furniture business, a rapid rise of custom residential furniture in recent years has shown that traditional supply chain has so many problems, consumption upgrading requires furniture supply chain can convert the consumption information into products and services, which means to cut large number of intermediate links, so that the furniture factories and consumers can do face-to-face transactions. To Shorten the supply chain, many furniture companies found hidden business opportunities.

Furniture manufacturers and consumers walking closer to each other

To carry on the management of supply chain in order to reduce the cost,shorten the product delivery cycle reduce inventory,and make the front end consumer information flow, cash flow fast and optimize the supply chain, cancel or replace the invalid link, are the direction that a lot of people mover towards. In the specific external practice, one is to open factory shop as Baiqiang,Qumei and other big size factories do.For consumers ,to buy furniture, in the past they have to go to furniture stores or franchisees, but now they can go to the furniture business outlets, factory stores, independent stores, to participate in open factory day activities held by furniture factories to get higher quality and inexpensive products and services; another is the online anf offline integration.For example, Linshimuye accelerated the offline store layout and implemented the same price online and offline, which means that consumers can go to experience the products and then scan code orders online to avoid the trouble of moving furniture to home by themselves.For furniture factories,they can deliver products through cross regional store distribution to save logistics costs; Third is to display furniture in the permanent exhibition platform, such as Dongguan Furniture Expo,where there is a lot of factory display sop and sales stores.

And consumers are getting closer to the factory. They can choose furniture not only in the local furniture stores but also in the online shop to compare the price and find furniture at the furniture exhibition, DIY own home in the custom furniture offline store.Some even go to the furniture industry base by plane to buy furniture. The rising middle class, the new generation of 90 consumer groups, their ability to obtain information is very rich, they walked into the furniture factory in more and more ways.

The age of big data, Cloud and AI make furniture manufacturers get a lot of consumers information about buying furniture, which will help companies shorten the supply chain, and even make consumers become an important part of the supply chain. Shortening the distance from consumers is a challenge for furniture enterprises and an opportunity for rebirth.