By Taruna Sondarva Published: Feb 2010
India is a land of wonderful and marvelous artistic work of wood. The rich handicraft and beautiful traditional attributes of art and design have established a reputation of Indian Furniture Industry in the nation and worldwide. The exceptional designs, rich, compact, and luxurious trends and, not the least, the supreme quality have given elegance to the furniture segment in the traditional as well as modern aspect.
However, the Indian Furniture industry has changed with the passage of time. It is no longer restricted to a production of a chair or a table or a bed but today it includes manufacturing of a range of furniture - home furnishings, designed interiors which spell class and elegance. It comprises not only the production of a wide range of products related to office, living room, bedroom, kitchen, garden, school furniture but also mattresses, furnishings, upholstery, parts of furniture etc. A wide variety of raw materials are used in production of furniture like wood, rattan, steel, plastic and metal and more recently silver. The furniture market in India is regionally concentrated according to the raw material used in manufacturing the furniture.
According to research by IKON Marketing Consultant, the furniture market in India is estimated at around Rs 70,000 crore. The market is highly fragmented where around Eighty-five to Ninety per cent of national production comes from regionally small size firms falls into the unorganized sector and remaining comes from the organized sector comprising of leading manufacturer, importers and dealer/distributors.
Home furniture is the largest segment in the Indian furniture market, accounting for about 65 per cent of furniture sales followed by office furniture segment with 20 per cent share and the contract segment, accounting for the remaining 15 per cent.
According to IKON's research estimates, there is boom