It has been a double blow for furniture brands from the retail side as well as from the real estate sector. The same store growth has been considerably lower this time and the B2B segment too did not provide any solace.

Nilkamal’s furniture retail business registered same store growth of eight per cent this year, a far cry from 30 per cent growth last year. Only due to new store openings the segment was able to catch up a double digit overall growth of 15 per cent, still much lower than last year’s 40 per cent.

“Generally there is a slowdown in retail sales across segments due to inflation. Further the housing sector has remained cautious due to the higher interest rates. Most of the cities are witnessing a slowdown in off-take. Both these factors have affected furniture sales,” said Manish Parekh, executive director, Nilkamal.

Godrej Interio, the home and office décor business of Godrej Industries, too is seeing a growth much lesser than expected.

“We were ambitious of achieving a CAGR of 30 per cent and same store growth of 20 per cent. But we’ve clock a same store growth of 15 per cent between April and December and that too with the help of a slew of measures, including introduction of several new functional products, multi-use furniture and initiatives in brand building.

The focus was more on targeted marketing through specialised publications and local area promotions,” said Anil Mathur, COO of Godrej Interio.

Compared to B2C business, B2B business got even more affected by the slump in real estate sector. For Godrej Interio, B2B growth stood at 11 per cent against 20 per cent last year.

“We are suppliers to large corporates, government establishments, PSUs as well as IT and ITeS companies. There has been a cautious spending from the part of these clients,” he said.

The ratio between B2B and B2C sales is currently 70:30 and the company wants this to be 50:50 in the coming years.

However, the silver lining for the business seems to be the replacement market, which has been generally growing over the years. According to Mathur, the time taken for replacement of old furniture has been coming down from 10 years to four to five years.