Furniture Manufacturers Can Achieve The Growth of 3% in Sales Forecasted at 2012

The German Furniture Industry Federation (VDM) is still working from the assumption that furniture manufacturers can achieve the growth of 3% in sales forecasted at the beginning of 2012 for the year as a whole. This was reported by the VDM in a press release issued for the annual financial press conference on 29 August. An increase of 3% would restore the furniture industry’s sales revenues close to the pre-crisis level of €17.2bn recorded for 2008. According to information from the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden, the increase of +7.1% in the first quarter of 2012 against the same period of last year was considerably more pronounced than had been expected. Considerable growth was achieved in January (+11.7%) and February (+9.1%) in particular. The growth rates were then lower in March (+1.8%) and April (+1.6%), followed by a slump of 7.2% in May. The VDM believes this, however, was attributable to the fact that this particular month had two fewer working days than in the same month of last year. Calendar shifts of bank holidays enabled sales to be raised by 13.5% again in June. This put furniture manufacturers’ sales revenues in the first half-year as a whole at €8.528bn, 4.5% higher than the level a year earlier. Domestic sales revenue rose by 4.5% to €6.123bn in the period of January to June, and foreign sales went up by 4.6% to €2.416bn. Source: euwid-wood-products