Furniture Business in the Russian Way: Unconventional Sales Growth Opportunities
The Conference on Furniture Business in the Russian Way: Unconventional Sales Growth Opportunities in the New Crisis 2023 has taken place within the Mebel 2022 exhibition at Expocentre Fairgrounds. The conference is organised by MIR (Furniture. Investments. Retail) and EXPOCENTRE AO.
Timur Irtuganov, Director General of the Association of Furniture and Woodworking Enterprises of Russia, gave a speech on ‘Does the government support furniture production in Russia?’ According to him, today about half a million people are employed in the furniture industry in Russia. 26 thousand enterprises in our country produce furniture; 99% of them are small businesses. Furniture makers themselves develop standards, which are constantly updated as equipment changes. Whereas 10 years ago only a few furniture companies had CNC centres, in the last six years 50% of the leading companies in the industry have been re-equipped. According to the volume of production, the industry will finish the current year with higher indicators than the previous one, predicted Timur Irtuganov. This will be due to higher prices and lower share of imports, among other things, and the dynamics will definitely go up in 2023, he said.
The conference moderator, founder and CEO of MIR, Alexey Lopukhin, spoke about how the furniture market has changed this year and about trends in traffic and sales in companies based on surveys conducted among them. Large federal companies have seen a 15-20% increase in sales this year, he said, which cannot be said for small and medium-sized businesses, where there has been a drop in sales.
Speakers at the conference, expert practitioners, provided a professional audience including owners and top managers of furniture companies with up-to-date summaries and forecasts for the furniture market. The speakers shared new business techniques for expanding clientele in the face of economic turbulence, effectively managing sales in the declining traffic in the furniture retail sector and achieving sales growth.
Press Service, EXPOCENTRE AO