Australia is a promising market for wooden furniture for Southeast Asian exporters. The amount they imported increased significantly in 2022. Vietnam is in the top nations exported with larger portion of the overall figure.

Overall, importing furniture from Southeast Asia is growing strongly in Australian market. In the top nations is Vietnam with 205.6 million USD, rise 26.4% year-on-year. Followed up is Malaysia with 101.9 million USD and Indonesia with 61.7 million USD.

These 3 countries are accounted for 20.9% of the total value Australia imported for wooden furniture. Their main imported products are: wooden frame chairs, living room, dining room, and bedroom furniture.

Base on data from the General Department of Customs, the export value of wooden office furniture reached 28.4 million USD in December 2022, reduce of 28.6% compare to year before.

The value for exporting wooden furniture in 2022 is reached 370.3 million USD, decline 15.9% over the same period in 2021.

In the segment of wooden furniture exporting, the strongest fall last year is office furniture because the main markets like: US, Japan, China and UK are dropped.

US market is the largest importing for office furniture last year. It’s reach 225.4 million USD, falling off 13.6% compare with the previous year.

For US office furniture market, it’s accounted for 60.9% total export value, followed by the Japanese market with 67.7 million USD; the Chinese market landed in third place 15.9 million USD, and the UK market with 13.6 million USD.

One of the main reasons for the sharply drop in office furniture spending is due to the high inflation. This made the buyer put priorities in spending on food and other essential goods not in furniture.

On the other hand, the high freight rates plus a jump in the purchase price of raw material (in this case is wood), rise in production costs and this make more difficult for Vietnamese office furniture suppliers.

The Import-Export Department said that for wooden office furniture prospect would also not be positive in this year. The economists have predicted the economy will continue to face many difficulties.

However, 1.6 billion USD was the imports value of Australia for wooden furniture in the last 11 months, rose 4.9% according to the statistics from the International Trade Center (ITC).

Australia was one of the most demanding markets in the world with many certification requirements, high quality standards and strict import processes. Nonetheless, people in this country have a high standard of living and they are willing to pay imported items with high prices if they are satisfied with the product.

Therefore, to enter Australian market, manufactures or exporters needed to pay attention to product quality instead of price as other markets. Besides that, they should also understanding buyer tastes and focus in building good brand.