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Seventy percent of customers strive to individualize their furniture acquisitions

Seventy percent of customers strive to individualize their furniture acquisitions

Snite, a well-known domestic manufacturer of children’s furniture, has changed the nature of its export activities from regular to periodic. She herself found it more profitable in the current conditions, at the current stage of her development, or did circumstances turn out that way? From a conversation with the co-founder of the company, Сергей Верминский, we realized that there are a whole range of reasons, among which is the fact that the export of children’s furniture has a certain specificity. For example, we talked about dozens of companies in export stories, and periodically fulfill the order of foreign customers, but often among them are projects of integrated furniture for housing or other objects. The manufacturer of children’s furniture is unlikely to count on such profitable orders. He needs to make more efforts and managerial skills to receive foreign orders.
The Snite company in the past, a regular participant in Moscow furniture exhibitions, was the first Ukrainian exhibitor at the Cologne furniture forum (demonstrated its furniture there three times), and steadily exported them to Kazakhstan. But for well-known reasons, as well as for dozens of other UAM members, the Russian market, and after it the Kazakh one for Snight, was lost. Many companies, which were oriented to a large extent primarily on the Russian market, appropriated its loss significantly, causing a protracted growth crisis. Snite, already quite a successful furniture maker at that time, an experienced player in the furniture market, managed to overcome the difficult situation with honor. He successfully strengthened his position in the domestic market, looked for other export opportunities, creating creative models and projects for children’s furniture for this. Those “Chinese” purchasing price conditions offered by foreign furniture retailers, retail chains, for furniture of the level guaranteed by Snite, were not only economically unprofitable, but also humiliating, so it was decided to focus on end customers, and now it remains unchanged. It is also unacceptable for the company that distributors seek to triple the price of the producer, and the proposed relationship is “first the product, and the money somehow later.”
– Did it affect your past exhibition activity?
– I must admit that already there is no pioneer enthusiasm. Now we do not consider it advisable for ourselves not to bypass a single exhibition. There were times when some exhibition projects were supported at their startup stage. The experience and practice gained in this matter show that each new exhibition project needs to be given the opportunity to take place, grow stronger, overcome the “childhood growth diseases”, in fact, demonstrate what its organizers declare, and only then participation in the new exhibition will be effective for us. So now we have “exhibition holidays”.
– Suspended and the development of new models?
– development never stops. Another thing is that it is realized not annually. In our business, both models and several years ago do not lose the status of furniture novelties. Their improvement and refinement usually lasts for years, which the company is now busy with. Increasingly, customers who seek to individualize their furniture acquisitions are initiating changes to the base models. In this sense, the updating of our serial furniture occurs regularly – both in colors and in design.

The section “Success Stories” was founded as part of a grant project with the support of the Swiss Cooperation Bureau in Ukraine, the name of the project: “Increasing the level of cooperation and trust with joint participation in international and national public procurement” – TENDER TOGETHER.

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