Furniture is an extremely important part of interior decoration. The development of this industry has gradually undergone some reforms in the past few years. At present, the number of people engaged in the furniture industry in the Chinese furniture market is extremely large, and market changes will inevitably affect the operation mode of the entire industry. There is no such thing as a fixed market. Only by following the market can you do long-term business. Regarding the future development breakthroughs of the Chinese furniture market, we will analyze them one by one for you.
1. The application of new materials will profoundly change the furniture industry
Throughout the development of the furniture industry, every huge leap in the furniture industry is inseparable from the application of new materials and technology. In the past thousand years, wood, bamboo and other easily processed plant materials have become the main materials for making furniture. The traditional furniture for nearly a thousand years is mostly wooden furniture; when we enter modern society, steel and alloy materials have begun to enter the furniture industry , Steel-wood structure furniture began to appear, and the function, shape and appearance of furniture have undergone many changes; followed by the large-scale use of polymer materials represented by PE, PVC, and ABS, which promoted the rapid iteration of the China furniture industry and brought four Profound changes.
The first is the proliferation of new hybrid materials. Macromolecule materials can be used alone in furniture, or they can be polymerized with other powder objects to form new materials, such as wood powder, rice husk, and straw combined to give birth to wood plastic materials; combined with stone powder to give birth to Stone plastic materials: combined with fly ash, carbon gold materials were born and so on. These various new materials have a variety of different physical properties, and they are used in furniture manufacturing, especially in the manufacturing of special furniture used in special environments.
The second is the transformation of furniture materials from consuming natural resources to being environmentally friendly and recyclable. Many new modified materials involving polymer materials have recyclable properties. Once the furniture is no longer used, it can be crushed into powder and re-pressed into panels to make new furniture.
The third is to solve the formaldehyde problem that has plagued the furniture industry for a century, making it possible to make healthy zero-formaldehyde furniture. The furniture has transitioned from solid wood furniture to modern MDF furniture. MDF is made of wood chips with resin adhesive. The resin adhesive inevitably contains formaldehyde, which is distributed to residents' homes through furniture and decoration materials made of MDF. , Which poses a great threat to human health and becomes a lingering nightmare in the modern furniture industry. The new type of panels made of polymer materials combined with wood chips and other powders, because the polymer materials do not contain formaldehyde, so these new material panels and furniture made of these new materials and furniture have almost no formaldehyde release, thus ensuring people's health.
The fourth is to change the standard for judging the quality of furniture from material value to use value. In the era when wood materials dominated the furniture industry, the functions of furniture were the same. Then, besides workmanship, the standard for judging the quality of furniture was the preciousness of wood materials. Furniture made of precious woods such as red sandalwood, huanghuali, mahogany, and beech not only It has practical functions and has been given the function of maintaining value and increasing value. As new materials enter the field of furniture production, furniture has more shapes and more functions, and there are obvious differences in the comfort of use.The main force of furniture consumption is mainly young people born in the 1990s and 00s. Their standards for purchasing furniture have changed from paying attention to precious materials to favoring comfort and aesthetics.
Therefore, furniture companies should pay attention to the application of new materials in products, and shift their R&D focus to creativity, shape, appearance, function and comfort in use. Only in this way can they have more room for development in the future market. .
2. Ergonomics is widely used in the furniture industry
The demand of modern consumers for furniture consumption is changing from "owning" to "enjoying". All furniture is ultimately used by people, and comfort will become one of the important criteria for evaluating the quality of furniture, especially furniture that people often use such as tables, seats, and bedding, and they have stricter comfort demand for these furniture.Nowadays, ergonomics and furniture manufacturing are more and more closely integrated. It is through scientific large-scale experiments to solve the problem of furniture making people more comfortable to use, sit , and lie.
Both residential furniture and office furniture are rarely used by one person, but shared by many people. Even if it is used by one person, the size and height of the furniture are constantly changing as children grow up. People of different heights, body types and usage habits have different requirements for the same kind of furniture. Separate from the specific users, the so-called engineering design of furniture is like a castle in the sky.Therefore, more and more furniture incorporates the mechanical adjustment function into the furniture design, so that a piece of furniture can be adapted to the specific use needs of each person through reasonable adjustments, so that each user can experience the comfort as tailor-made Feel.
This adjustable functional design is more obvious in table and chair furniture. In the next three to five years, transforming and upgrading traditional fixed furniture in terms of adjustable functions to meet the furniture requirements of artificial comfort will be one of the important breakthrough points for Chinese furniture products to break the game.
3. Meet the needs of customers' customized furniture
With the improvement of people’s living standards and the awakening of a new generation of young people’s personality awareness; with the wide application of new materials, new technologies, and new processes, and the increasingly short and flat sales channels such as e-commerce，the cost of individualized furniture production and circulation is constantly decreasing. Meeting the needs of custom-made furniture has become an important breakthrough point for many traditional furniture companies in their transformation.
There are two main ways to meet the needs of custom home furniture.
The first is that the customer provides house data or specific requirements for a certain kind of furniture, and the furniture factory issues design drafts and renderings. After the customer approves, the factory conducts customized production of furniture. The material, style, structure, appearance and color of the furniture can be individually customized. With the help of digital color printing technology, it is even possible to print patterns or photos required by customers on the furniture. The characteristic of this furniture customization method is that the factory has undertaken almost all the work in the customization process, so this will incur high labor and time costs.
The first is that the customer provides house data or specific requirements for a certain kind of furniture, and the furniture factory issues design drafts and renderings. After the customer approves, the factory conducts customized production of furniture. The material, style, structure, appearance and color of the furniture can be individually customized. With the help of digital color printing technology, it is even possible to print patterns or photos required by customers on the furniture. The characteristic of this furniture customization method is that the factory has undertaken almost all the work in the customization process, so this will incur high labor and time costs.
The second way is to develop modular furniture. Modular furniture refers to furniture that consumers can freely assemble and adjust styles of basic furniture modules with different functions, specifications and colors according to their actual needs and creativity to meet the individual requirements of different spaces and different functions. Manufacturers only need to produce standardized furniture modules, and hand over the work process of personalized customization to customers or assist customers.
Modular furniture has long been used in wooden furniture. Some furniture factories produce wooden lattices of different types and colors. Consumers can assemble various small wooden formats into larger storage spaces with fittings, door panels, handles and other accessories. . However, due to the limitation of materials, customers still need to use screwdrivers, hammers and other installation tools and hardware accessories to complete the installation, and the weight of these furniture is heavier and the installation is more complicated.
4. The era of intelligent furniture is coming
Traditional furniture is a fixed structure, there is no soul, people can only passively adapt to the existing furniture; more and more modern furniture incorporates ergonomic adjustment functions, people can manually adjust various indicators, making the furniture more suitable for personal use In the not-too-distant future, with the enhancement of smart chip functions and cost reduction, data transmission becomes more and more convenient, and information receiving and processing terminals increase. We can foresee the emergence of intelligent furniture. Intelligent furniture will collect and calculate data Process, self-regulate and actively adapt to the various needs of the owner.
Imagine the future of intelligent furniture. In the future, smart beds will generally have a built-in carbon fiber infrared heating system. The smart bed will heat the quilt to a suitable temperature in advance before the owner needs to go to bed, and remind the owner to go to bed at a fixed bedtime. The smart bed monitors various physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, and sleep status during the owner’s sleep. Together with the smart bracelet worn by the owner during the day, the data is traditionally transmitted to the community doctor’s smart terminal, and the doctor’s health advice is sent to the mobile phone, PC and other terminals Real-time feedback to the owner.
The smart bookshelf will automatically enter information about the owner's books, count his reading frequency and preferences, and recommend new book information to the owner by connecting to the mobile phone APP. If the owner sets a plan to persist in reading, the bookshelf will remind the owner to read at a fixed time through the terminal.
The smart student desk and chair only needs parents to input the child’s height, leg length and other basic body shape information, it will automatically adjust the height of the seat and desk according to the principles of ergonomics, and it will automatically adjust the tilt angle of the table according to the children's writing, reading or painting activities.It will promptly remind the child to maintain a correct sitting posture when the child has bad postures such as forward leaning, eyes too close to the book, tilted head. If the child still sits incorrectly after repeated reminders, the smart table and chair will report to the parent through a terminal such as a mobile phone.
The organic combination of technology such as mechanical systems, control systems, and information processing and transmission systems with traditional furniture will create a broader imagination space for scene applications. Perhaps in the future, modern furniture will be equivalent to smart appliances.
