Office Furniture Supply and Workplace Trends: The Dealers Point of View

How are office spaces evolving in Europe? The European Office Furniture sector is facing several challenges, assuming increasingly blurred boundaries. Shared spaces are ever more important, as well as the assonance with the domestic environment and the growing collaboration between companies within the sector and others, like outdoor furniture firms. Additionally, the market for refurbished Office Furniture is expanding, with dealers started dealing with these products under the strong initiatives of leading Office Furniture brands.

In such a context, the CSIL Research Report 'Office Furniture Supply and Workplace Trends: The Dealers Point of View' is aiming at exploring Office Furniture sector changes according to the dealers' point of view, even offering up-to-date information on the European Office Furniture market, according to CSIL's knowledge and in-depth research.

THE OFFICE FURNITURE MARKET IN EUROPE: A SECTOR OVERVIEW

The study is introduced with an overview of the Office Furniture Market providing:

• Office Furniture production, consumption, and international trade dynamics over 2019-2024
• Office Furniture current market size by European country
• How distribution channels for Office Furniture (Direct Sales, Specialist Dealers, Non-Specialists, E-commerce, Others) have evolved
• Office Furniture exports, imports, top exporting and importing countries and Exports by destinations/imports by origin
• Key factors driving demand for Office Furniture

OFFICE FURNITURE SUPPLY AND WORKPLACE TRENDS. RESULTS FROM CSIL's SURVEY

For this research report, CSIL also involved around 100 Office Furniture distributors (dealers, distributors, interior designers/specifiers, e-tailers) located in Europe and surveyed in October 2024, to go in-depth into the workplace transformation and describe its impact on product features.

In particular, the CSIL survey focused on:

• Dealers' future expectations
• The customer budget by office area, new kinds of furniture, and furnishing in the workspace
• Client priorities in the future and contract segments expected to increase
• Height Adjustable desks (HAT) and kind of mechanisms
• The emerging offer for refurbished items, product categories, price differences, and supply organization
• Sales through E-commerce

GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE

The considered countries were divided into six areas according to their geographical proximity and similar market characteristics:

• Scandinavia: Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), Norway (NO) and Sweden (SE);
• DACH: Germany (DE), Austria (AT) and Switzerland (CH);
• France + Benelux: Belgium (BE), France (FR), the Netherlands (NL);
• United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland (IE).
• Southern Europe:Greece (GR), Italy (IT), Portugal (PT) and Spain (ES);
• Eastern Europe: Poland (PL), Czech Republic (CZ), Romania (RO), Hungary (HU) and others.

Highlights:

Today's office world is under a huge transformation, with concepts such as flexibility, coziness, and sociability shaping the new workspaces. Office Furniture is ever more inspired by residential environments while remaining technologically much more advanced and function-oriented. About half of a medium/large office project budget, according to the results of CSIL's survey, is represented by shared and focus spaces, while the traditional desk-based areas are reduced significantly. All these assumptions have led to demand growth for types of furniture not typically considered within traditional offices.

In this context, some major changes are affecting distribution and office as a service. A relevant share of dealers started selling refurbished office furniture. Furthermore, almost half of the CSIL survey's respondents declared that they are using e-commerce.