Home furnishing is expected to gradually usher in a slack season after October. However, the "11.11 shopping festival" seems to gradually ignite the passion in home furnishing and many home furnishing firms are formulating detailed strategies concerning "11.11". Brands focusing on e-commerce invest more manpower and resources, while offline stores are also taking the opportunity to make promotions in an attempt to attract more consumers.

Home Furnishing Industry Prefer "11.11" Consumption Potentials

  
In view of the Golden Week of National Day that just passed by, all the home furnishing brands were in only slight growth and some were just flat compared with the previous year in spite of a variety of marketing activities. Dai Jiangping, president of Beijing Jinzhao Decoration Design Co., Ltd. said: "we feel more tired compared with previous years in spite of this year's growth. And it seems that business will be harder to do on the market in the following year". In home furnishing, normalized promotions have already made consumers no longer concentrate on some holiday and boom their consumption demands. On the other hand, real estate market makes so-so performance in 2015 compared with previous years, which has an immediate impact on the downstream home furnishing. 

On last year's "11.11", of the Top 10 Tmall stores in sales with all varieties, 3 were from the sector of home furnishing and construction materials. LINSHIMUYE, Luolai Home and Quanyou Household ranked No.4, No.8 and No.10 respectively. Besides, sales of Home Furnishing e-station and Mercury broke through the benchmark of RMB 100 million. The online performance prosperity on last year's "11.11" inspires home furnishing to be full of expectations about this year's "11.11" and lots of brands focusing on e-commerce start to launch a variety of marketing activities due to the huge potential in the online market. Meanwhile, traditional home furnishing begins taking the opportunity of "11.11" to promote brands and products in an attempt to have a finger in the pie-atmosphere of hot sale.

On Oct. 13, "2015 Tmall 11.11 Global Spree" was initiated in Hangzhou. It is known that Tmall is expected to highlight globalization and propose concepts of "buy-globally" and "sell-globally" on this year's "11.11". As for home furnishing firms, if they want to face international market and compete with international brands, price war will clearly not work and how to promote brand and quality will be the first issue to be considered this year.

On Oct. 1, Provisional Regulations on Centralized Promotions on Online Commodities and Services enacted by State Administration for Industry and Commerce of the People's Republic of China started to be implemented. It is clearly specified that those not in refund of subscription, 7-day product return or change in pre-sale, or other restrictions in e-commerce promotion or with virtual trading volume, price rise prior to promotion etc. will be gravely punished. By disclosing the Regulations upon the arrival of "11.11", consumers are granted with more powerful guarantee in online shopping, and meanwhile more stringent requirements are proposed for firms in managing products and services.

Penetration of Popularity of "11.11" in Home Furnishing

As for brands focusing on e-commerce, "11.11" is bound to be a mass spree. In view of the sales performance in home furnishing on last year's "11.11", the node is a huge drive to brand promotion and product sales. Han Xiaojing told reporters from The Beijing News: "Previously, November following each year's National Holiday was a slack season in home furnishing and it was a sprint from December to Spring Festival showing good sales performance thanks to more promotional activities. At present, however, '11.11' has become an important sale node superior to National Day and other traditional holidays".

As standardized commodities and products are increasingly mature, commodities provided by traditional home furnishing stores are basically found online and customers of the physical stores are constantly penetrating into all the channels on the market. Online shopping festival has become an increasingly important promotional node for stores to break through their performance and all the stores are bound to rage a promotional war on the occasion of "11.11".

Sun Hao, General Manager of TISA, said: “Currently, the significance of '11.11' is close to that of the national holidays, '11.11' has become an important promotional node as soon as it rises. As a result, home furnishing and other sectors become popular and mass consumption becomes popular as well. It is bound to be highlighted."

As for traditional firms, the promotion of "11.11" still stays in routine promotional activities. According to Wang Zhiming, General Manager of Der Beijing Branch, "11.11" has a minor impact on traditional construction materials as products of construction materials are in long service life with more follow-up services, which do not fit e-commerce. "At present, consumers tend to buy in promotions, forming a vicious cycle. Moreover, the pricing power is mastered by all the big brands. And product costs, which are permanent, will not be much lower than normal days, even though the activities are expanding. Therefore, some firms of construction materials have no special activity on the '11.11'."

As for traditional home furnishing firms, "11.11" is not striking and this year's market is generally sluggish, whose performance on holidays such as May 1 and Oct. 1 is not much better than normal days, Dai Jiangping held a similar view. However, given a similar market, one will lose some chances if conducting no act while others do. Therefore, Jinzhao Decoration is planned to initiate its community service activities, take root in communities and manage the foundation for decoration for old houses and local decoration.

According to Gui Zhenhua, Manager of Elegant Living Home Furnishing Decoration Promotion, previous Novembers were slack seasons for home furnishing, but nowadays many stores are expected to promote their products or brands by taking the opportunity as "11.11" is becoming an inevitable trend in the sale. He said: "Products count a lot in online sales as '11.11' activities are not successful without products suitable to online sales."

*This is Original, please specify the source if reproduced!