CIFF Shanghai has gained deep insights into the shifting landscape of the home decoration and furnishings industry. The sector has bid farewell to its golden era of high-speed growth and entered a new phase of deep adjustment and comprehensive reshuffling. Numerous leading home furnishing brands have embarked on large-scale strategic transformations, serving as a vivid microcosm of the current industry upheaval.

For a long time, domestic leading home furnishing brands generally relied on heavy-asset flagship store models to rapidly expand their market presence. However, as the market environment evolves, the traditional heavy-asset large-store model has gradually become ill-suited to today's consumption market. Recently, leading home furnishing enterprises have been divesting multiple self-owned properties across China, initiating the largest asset restructuring effort since these brands entered the Chinese market. Combined with earlier moves to close several large-format stores at the beginning of the year while focusing on smaller urban outlets, industry leaders have officially bid farewell to extensive scale expansion and are fully pivoting toward lightweight, refined deep-cultivation operational models.

Industry experts analyze that the home furnishings industry's past growth was heavily dependent on the one-time consumption dividend of urbanization and new home decoration. Today, as real estate enters the stock era, market demand has fundamentally shifted. Old home renovation, partial remodeling, and smart home upgrades have become the mainstream consumption trends. Consumers are becoming increasingly rational in their purchasing decisions. Demand for large-scale whole-house renovations is declining, while demand for quality improvements and partial replacements continues to rise, leaving traditional large-format stores facing declining foot traffic and pressure on sales per square meter.

Large self-owned stores carry high fixed costs and substantial capital tie-up, making their drawbacks conspicuous in a stock-competition market environment. Industry brands are shifting from suburban megastores to urban boutique stores, with a focus on instant retail and home services. This represents the core transformation path aligned with evolving consumption patterns—shifting from scale expansion to efficiency-driven growth. This adjustment philosophy has also become an important reference direction for numerous home furnishing enterprises undergoing transformation.

Beyond individual leading brands, the operating data of multiple listed home furnishing companies in China provides direct evidence of the overall industry under pressure. Many mainstream home furnishing brands have seen revenues decline continuously for several years. Multiple enterprises have experienced simultaneous drops in both revenue and net profit after reaching performance peaks, with overall industry operating pressure continuing to mount.

The adjustment trend in the home furnishings industry is continuing into 2026. Data from relevant industry reports shows that from January to May this year, retail sales of furniture, building and decoration materials, and home appliances all recorded year-on-year declines. The entire home furnishing industry chain is in a critical stage of destocking, structural adjustment, and transformation promotion. With its long-standing focus on home furnishing industry development trends, CIFF Shanghai clearly sees that the industry's competitive logic has been completely rewritten—from competing on store scale and expansion speed to competing on operational efficiency, product innovation, and scenario-based service capabilities.

Currently, numerous leading domestic home furnishing brands are implementing whole-house furnishing transformations, enhancing customer stickiness and operational efficiency through one-stop home furnishing services. Meanwhile, innovative industry models continue to emerge. Many enterprises are actively building out full-chain services from home purchase to move-in readiness, deploying new smart home scenarios, and deeply cultivating niche segments such as customized scenarios for young demographics, precisely tapping into differentiated consumption demands.

The mature transformation experience of overseas home furnishing brands also provides valuable lessons for the domestic industry. High-quality overseas home furnishing brands have stabilized their market share through lightweight urban stores and integrated supply chain models. By upgrading the service attributes of their stores and improving online fulfillment systems, they have significantly enhanced supply chain operational efficiency, offering fresh perspectives for the upgrade of home furnishing retail models.

Overall, in the home furnishings industry's era of stock competition, scenario-based refinement, precision operation, and lightweight models will become the core development keywords. Relying on continuous industrial innovation and model upgrades, the future home furnishings industry, supported by the industry exchange, innovation showcase, and resource matchmaking platform built by CIFF Shanghai, will steadily achieve high-quality transformation and upgrading.

Source: toutiao