On February 15, the China Building Materials Circulation Association released the National Building Materials and Home Furnishing Prosperity Index BHI. The data shows that the national building materials and household prosperity index BHI was 119.88 in February, an increase of 24.26 points month-on-month and 16.91 points year-on-year. The February sales of building materials and home furnishing stores above designated size nationwide were 113.027 billion yuan, up 44.18% month-on-month and 34.54% year-on-year; the cumulative sales from January to February were 191.422 billion yuan, up 4.39% year-on-year. In February, BHI hit a new high in the same period in recent years, and the confidence in the building materials and home furnishing market was boosted.

According to the latest statistics from TDUK, imports of major wood and panel products to the UK in 2022 will decrease by 2.4 million cubic meters to 9.3 million cubic meters compared with the same period of the previous year, a year-on-year decrease of 25.8%. Among them, this is mainly related to the reduction in cork imports. Figures show UK softwood log imports in 2022 are down 25% from the record 2021 figure. Despite the sharp drop in volume value, the average cost of softwood imports rose by 7% due to already strong global demand.

News on March 17, data released by the US research firm Descartes Datamyne showed that the volume of sea container shipments from Asia to the United States in February was 1,189,997, a year-on-year decrease of 29%, and the decline was again wider than in January (17%). Against the backdrop of inflation in the United States, freight shipments in the furniture category have stagnated. The furniture category, which accounts for nearly 20% of the transportation volume, fell sharply by 37% year-on-year, affecting the overall transportation volume and also lower than the transportation volume in February 2020 before the new crown epidemic created the special need for working from home. In addition, the US housing market is sluggish, and the demand for furniture linked to the purchase of housing is also slowing.

According to data released by Descartes Datamyne, a US research firm, the volume of sea containers shipped from Asia to the United States in February was 1,189,997 (converted into 20-foot containers), down 29% year-on-year and expanding again from January (17%). Among them, China's container exports to the United States fell by 25.4%, Japan by 19.9%, Indonesia by 14.2%, Vietnam by 12.5%, Bangladesh by 10%, Thailand by 3.7%, and India by 0.1%. In the middle, furniture, toys and sports equipment dragged down container exports. The furniture category, which accounted for nearly 20% of the transportation volume, decreased by 37% year-on-year, which affected the overall transportation volume.

According to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Tuesday, in terms of US dollars, China’s exports from January to February fell by 6.8% year-on-year, a decrease of 3.1 percentage points from December; imports fell by 10.2% year-on-year, a decline of 2.7 percentage points from December. From January to February, the trade surplus was US$116.89 billion. Exports performed better than expected in January-February, while imports were weaker than expected. The average forecast of 7 analysts collected by Wind shows that from January to February, exports fell by 8.3% year-on-year, and imports fell by 3.3% year-on-year. Analysts said that the shrinking demand in Europe and the United States is still an important factor suppressing exports. In addition, the high base in the same period last year also dragged down this year's export growth to a certain extent. From January to February 2022, China's export value increased by 16.3% year-on-year.

Recently, driven by the expected recovery in the real estate market, the home furnishing industry, which is the back-end consumer industry of the real estate link, has also ushered in an improvement in sales. Some brokerages said that the sales of the home furnishing industry are affected by more than 60% of real estate. The continuous effectiveness of the policy will help to ensure the delivery of new houses, drive the demand for home furnishing listed companies to strengthen, and their performance to recover. The person in charge of Del Future said that the home furnishing industry has been very hot recently, and the company's current production and sales situation is relatively good, especially in the first two months of this year, compared with the fourth quarter of 2022, the sales situation has rebounded more significantly.

On the afternoon of December 12, sponsored by Shanghai Furniture Industry Association and Shanghai Creative City Think Tank, co-hosted by Shanghai UBM International Exhibition Co., Ltd., co-organized by China Brand and 800 Show, "Future Home Furnishing Future - Furnishing Metaverse Summit Forum" The 800 show in Shanghai was successfully held. With the vigorous development of the digital economy, as an integrated application body of multiple cutting-edge technologies such as VR, blockchain, and 5G, Metaverse has moved from concept to stage, and is accelerating from "future" to "present". Under the wave of metaverse, people's life and working methods will change. What new models will furniture companies and furniture exhibitions have in the future? This summit forum specially invites experts, scholars and representatives of furniture enterprises in Metaverse to discuss the future of Metaverse and home furnishing. Li Xia, secretary-general of the Shanghai Family Association, presided over the forum. Chen Wenshan, director of the Urban Industry Division of the Shanghai Economic and Information Commission, delivered a speech for the forum. She believes that with the rapid development of technology and digitalization, it is very timely and necessary for the Shanghai Furniture Industry Association to organize and plan this "Home Furnishing Metaverse Forum". She pointed out that the debut of the new concept and new products of "Metaverse + Fashion" at the first World Design Capital Conference brought everyone the experience of digital technology empowering fashion. She hoped that Shanghai furniture enterprises would accept new ideas and concepts and be at the forefront of fashion. At the same time, Chen Wenshan introduced the "eight fashion products" in the action plan for the high-quality development of fashion consumer goods in Shanghai: fashionable clothing, cosmetics, exquisite food, sports products, smart products, life products, handicraft products, digital trendy products, and Shanghai furniture companies are required to make efforts in terms of smart products and good life products to promote the high-quality development of enterprises. In the end, she introduced the municipal government's use of technology to promote industrial upgrading, demand-driven core technology innovation, and design to link the development of emerging industries. Gao Wei, President of the Shanghai Furniture Industry Association, said in his speech that although we are currently facing unprecedented epidemics and challenges, we will also usher in opportunities and changes that have not occurred in a century. good time. If the implementation of the Internet, digitalization, and intelligence has brought value to the enterprise, then actively paying attention to and embracing the application of Metaverse in the development of the home furnishing industry will surely bring greater possibilities for the future layout of the enterprise. the Mr. Zhang Yong, chairman of Linker Te...

According to the information compiled and released by the Circulation Industry Development Department of the Ministry of Commerce and the China Building Materials Circulation Association, the National Building Materials and Home Furnishing Prosperity Index BHI in November was 86.52, down 11.60 points month-on-month and 52.98 points year-on-year. According to the China Building Materials Circulation Association, the winter off-season is approaching, and the situation of epidemic prevention and control in some cities is still severe in November, and the BHI is showing a rapid decline. Data show that the November sales of building materials and home furnishing stores above designated size nationwide were 60.870 billion yuan, a month-on-month decrease of 26.22% and a year-on-year decrease of 52.58%; the cumulative sales from January to November 2022 were 1,089.251 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.97%.

Recently, technology giant Apple officially entered the smart home field in the Chinese market. At present, the official website of Apple China has developed a separate home section (Apple Home). Judging from the page, the home furnishing sector is mainly divided into three categories: HomePod, Home App (family App) and smart home items. Among them, HomePod is Apple's smart audio product, which can be connected with Apple's smart home products and controlled by human voice recognition; Home App is the system software that comes with the iPhone or iPad. At the bottom of the page are the smart home items that Apple is currently selling. Up to now, Apple’s official website has launched nearly 30 smart home items, and the product types mainly include cameras, light bulbs, door locks, switches, routers, sockets and so on. The price is much more expensive than ordinary smart home products. A smart color-changing LED bulb of the Nanoleaf Essentials brand sells for as high as 168 yuan, and the price of more advanced ambient lights and other products has exceeded 1,000 yuan. Apple has laid out the home furnishing sector as early as nine years ago. In 2014, Apple officially released the HomeKit suite on the iOS 8 system, and on the iOS 11 system two years later, Apple released the Apple Home app (family app). In 2019, Apple and Google, Amazon, Samsung and Zigbee (now renamed CSA Alliance) established an organization called Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP), which stated that it aims to solve the interconnection problem between smart home products, and Prepare to plan the birth of Matter, a new smart home connection protocol. Judging from the current situation, Apple's smart home layout is still in the initial stage, lacking items such as TVs, refrigerators, and sweeping robots. Compared with domestic technology companies such as Xiaomi, the overall progress is still relatively slow. In addition, due to the particularity of iOS, Apple may have insufficient compatibility when connecting more smart homes in the future, and these will have a certain impact on Apple's development in the field of smart homes.

According to the Vietnam News Agency, the latest statistics from the General Administration of Customs of Vietnam show that the export value of Vietnam's timber and wood products is expected to reach US$15.8 billion in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 6.7%. Meanwhile, Vietnam's imports of lumber and wood products rose 4.1 percent to $2.8 billion. The trade surplus is expected to be $14.1 billion, up 6.5 percent from last year. In the past three years, the epidemic and global value-added turmoil have severely impacted the furniture supply chain. However, under the background of shortage of raw material supply, rising logistics costs, and labor shortage, the export data of Vietnam's furniture industry still maintains a growth trend. According to the statistics of the Vietnam Forestry Administration, the export growth of timber and wood products has been increasing for more than 20 consecutive years, from 220 million US dollars in 2000 to 15.8 billion US dollars in 2022, and it is also a growth that does not exist in any domestic industry in Vietnam. Pei Zhengyi, director of the Vietnam Forestry Administration, said that since 2022, the global timber market has been affected by the epidemic and the Russia-Ukraine incident. Compared with the performance in the first half of the year, the Vietnamese timber market will go through a difficult time in the second half of the year. Rising global inflation has negatively impacted orders for Vietnam's furniture industry in the final months of 2022, putting exporters in a critical situation. However, with the joint efforts of companies in the industry, the industry is gradually approaching the goal set at the beginning of 2022. In the first 11 months of this year, Vietnam's timber and wood products exports were worth about US$14.6 billion, up 9 percent year-on-year. In November, the monthly export volume was US$1.1 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 14.6%. Exports fell further in December, pulling annual growth back to 6.7 percent. It is worth mentioning that during this year, the European Union, the United States, China, Japan and South Korea, with an export value of US$155, accounted for more than 90% of the total and remained Vietnam's main export markets. Relying on the achievements made in 2022, for the coming 2023, Pei Zhengyi said that the forestry output value will increase by 5-5.5% this year to 17.5 billion US dollars.

The national building materials and household prosperity index BHI was 88.93 in December, up 2.41 points month-on-month and down 34.30 points year-on-year. The December sales of building materials and home furnishing stores above designated size nationwide were 71.825 billion yuan, an increase of 18% month-on-month and a year-on-year decrease of 39.91%; the cumulative sales for the whole year of 2022 were 1,161.076 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.39%.

The value-added tax invoice data released by the State Administration of Taxation shows that during the Spring Festival holiday in 2023, the sales revenue of consumption-related industries across the country will increase by 12.2% compared with the Spring Festival holiday of the previous year, and an average annual increase of 12.4% over the Spring Festival holiday in 2019, maintaining a steady growth overall. Among them, the consumption of household upgrade products grew rapidly, and the sales revenue of furniture and hardware increased by 15.2% and 8.6% year-on-year respectively, which was an average annual increase of 9.9% and 19.4% respectively compared with the Spring Festival holiday in 2019.