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Overseas businesses invest in China's furniture marke
¡¾Jan.26, 2002¡¿

Overseas businesses invest in China's furniture marke

Attracted by potentially huge profits, enterprises from Italy, Malaysia and the United states are all investing in the Chinese furniture market. However, they are not achieving very good results from residential furniture.

"Foreign furniture is much more expensive because the production cost is high," said some cusomers.

Foreign enterprises spend much more on designs and quality material, and aftersale services.

However, when it comes to buying furniture, Chinese consumer habits are different, Chinese people are very brand-conscious when buying clothes, food and cars. However, they do not care so much about brand names when buying furniture.

"Most Chinese could name famous foreign brands of food, clothes, cars and shampoos, but not of furniture " said the specialist.

Moreover, he said, foreign furniture enterprises are not known to many Chinese because they seldom spend money on TV commercials and newspaper advertisements.

However, foreign enterprises were making good profits from selling office furniture, mostly to mushrooming foreign enterprises.

There will be about 20 million people moving into new houses in each of the upcoming 10 years. The spending on furniture for new bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms and living rooms will surpass 10 billion yuan ($1.2 billion).