Laboratory My House: We Expect Furniture Sales to Essentially Drop in September
COVID-19 pandemic has also affected furniture stores, besides all other industries. Despite essential discounts, part of furniture stores complains about the expected plunge in sales and negative tendencies.
As noted by Guram Mgeladze, manager of the furniture stores of Laboratory My House, Kare, and Mobler, the sales have dropped by 30%. However, a radical plunge is expected to start in September.
“In March-April, we took attempts to work in a digital format, but the sales almost zeroed in that period. In May, after the restart, the sales rose to the indicators of May 2019, but in June, the sales started declining. As a rule, the summer period is a very busy time for sales of outdoor furniture, but this year is an exception. At this stage, we have a 30% contraction compared to the same period of 2019, and we expect this tendency to continue in July-August too. We suppose the slowdown will continue in autumn. Summer season will pass away, and the existing grave situation will become more evident, and this factor will negatively affect our business too. Furniture is considered as luxury things. Buying furniture signifies an investment-making. Similar investments are postponed in crisis periods. Therefore, we expect sales to shrink starting in September radically. In this period, we have to offer big discounts. We have worked on discounts for almost the whole season. This year we started developing the wholesale direction, and we cooperate with various corporate segments for implementing various projects, be it hotels, restaurants, or business centers. Details will be outlined later,” Guram Mgeladze noted.
As noted by Archil Mgaloblishvili, one of the founders of Italian furniture house VERONA, despite pandemic, sales have not shrunk; however, this success may be preconditioned by huge discounts.
“The number of our clients has not declined. On the contrary, clients actively buy our products. As for sales, we have no contraction; however, this success may be preconditioned by other factors. We are moving to a new building, and we have announced huge discounts. Therefore, the current sales almost equal to the sales of the same period of 2019. As for online sales, amid the state of emergency, we started sales from our website, but this is a complicated process anyway because without seeing products personally, clients cannot make decisions and buy products. Besides the website, we offer our products through Facebook; however, primarily foreign clients use these services, and their number of very small. Anyway, we have positive expectations, because a new season will start for furniture sales in autumn because we are moving to a new building and we expect our sales to double at least”, Achil Mgalobslishvili noted.