Home industry competition will accelerate change

The collapse of the Shenzhen Huaren Industrial Factory, the failure of the Huayuanxuan supply chain, and the difficulties faced by the furniture of the Fugongdao furniture workers all show signs that the traditional furniture manufacturing industry is facing a collective dilemma. 2014 is a critical year for China's manufacturing industry. Companies are faced with upgrades in production processes, multi-faceted corporate management models, and marketing models, and the competitive landscape of the home industry will accelerate change in the future.

Manufacturing as a home-based industry As a traditional manufacturing industry, production capacity is fundamental, and production capacity and scale are important criteria for measuring whether a company can grow. Many well-known brand companies are trapped in the lack of manufacturing capabilities, resulting in the lack of market competitiveness of the brand, it is difficult to take off again.

Not long ago, Zhongxinxin Furniture's new production base settled in Anhui Liu'an Yeji. It covers an area of ​​546 acres and a total construction area of ​​420,000 square meters. It plans to invest 1 billion yuan to build a large-scale production base of Zhongzhixin furniture leaf set. The company will introduce international advanced technology and production equipment across the board, and build the new industrial park into a world-class furniture and industrial park integrating modern furniture design, R&D, production and sales.

On January 1, this year, the new Environmental Protection Law, known as "the strictest in history," was formally implemented. In line with the implementation of the new environmental protection law, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has successively issued supporting documents such as the "Interim Measures for Continuously Punishment in the Protection of the Environment on a Daily basis," and the "Provisional Measures on Enforcing and Sealing Up the Environmental Protection," so that the penalties imposed by the law are no longer a dead letter. This means that in the future, the illegal costs of companies will be very high, and the furniture industry will start an environmental survival war.

In addition, Beijing Municipality issued the "Beijing Industrial Pollution Industry, Production Process Adjustment and Withdrawal and Equipment Elimination Catalogue (2014 Edition)", in which furniture and building materials accounted for a large part. It can be said that the furniture industry has become one of the key targets for the battle against environmental protection and has attracted the attention of the entire industry.

In June 2014, Qumei Furniture was the first company to announce the use of water-based paints across its entire line of products, becoming the first in the industry and setting off a “oil-to-water” environmental protection fever in the furniture industry. According to Zhao Ruihai, chairman of Qumei Furniture, Qumei Furniture spent two years in research and development of technology and transformation of production lines. Apart from being more environmentally friendly, the use of water-based paint on furniture has not been significantly different from traditional paint.

It is understood that as early as two years ago, Qumei Furniture began to transform the factory and explored the water-based paint process, finally overcoming the difficulties and realizing the full range of waterborne paints.

In this regard, Tan Chunlei, deputy secretary-general of the China Coatings Industry Association, believes that water-based paints will be the development trend of the industry regardless of environmental health or high-efficiency emission reduction. “Qumei’s initiative to start water-based paint across the board will have a landmark significance for the development and progress of the furniture industry.”

In addition, in the ceramic sanitary ware industry, which has been regarded by the public as a high energy consumption and high pollution industry, the policy pressure brought by the new environmental protection law is quite obvious. The industry believes that the new environmental protection law has forced ceramic companies to transform and upgrade, forcing companies to increase investment in environmental protection facilities, and the average production cost of the industry has shifted upwards. However, due to excess capacity, it is difficult to transfer costs to downstream consumers. In the end, most of the environmental protection costs will be borne by companies. Therefore, eliminating backward companies and implementing mergers and acquisitions will become the new normal for this year's industry.

Technology Promotion With the development of mobile Internet, e-commerce and other information technology, traditional furniture companies are transforming into modern enterprises, and the furniture industry has been optimized from manufacturing to brand chain operations and terminal services.

In the mighty Internet thinking into the traditional furniture industry, the traditional home industry's production and marketing model is also gradually being eroded by the Internet. Recently, the internet company Xiaomi has entered the fields of air purifiers, medical equipment, televisions, and food and beverage takeaways with its smart home concept. Lei Jun called it the construction of the millet ecosystem, namely "hardware + software + Internet services." For Xiaomi, a new business model, some observers believe that it will lead the transformation and upgrading of traditional domestic industries.

Pearl introduced the IBM, the Federation introduced Digital China, and the wardrobe leading company Sophia also announced its cooperation with Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company. This shows that the combination of traditional furniture companies and high-tech companies is proceeding at a high speed. Furniture, as a traditional manufacturing industry, introduces more electronic high-tech elements, and in a more “accurate and efficient” way, it links the communication and delivery between factories, distributors and consumers, and seeks for enterprises through modernization, technology, and information technology. The new driving force for development and the enhancement of competitiveness are manifestations of advancing with the times.