MARCH 2018 FEATURE:

Unveiled officially by Minister for Communications and Information Minister Dr Yaacob Ibrahim at the opening of Singapore Design Week (SDW) 2018, the Furniture Industry 2021 Roadmap (FIR) is a result of six intensive months of stakeholder engagements, meetings and workshops since August 2017.

Commissioned by the SFIC, with funding support from the DesignSingapore Council (DSG), the in-depth deliberation involved SFIC key Executive Committee members and secretariat, furniture and furniture-related industry players, partners across diverse clusters including urban planners, architects, design and business community, as well as agencies such as DSG, International Enterprise Singapore and SPRING Singapore.

The timing couldn’t have been better. According to the latest Technavio report, the global furniture industry is expected to grow from S$631 billion in 2017 to S$766 billion in 2021, with the biggest contributions coming from Asia. To seize this opportunity, an industry transformation industry is inevitable.

Across Asia, more are living in cities and the Chinese urban middle class are expected to account for much of the growth in the coming years. As SFIC President Mr Mark Yong puts it, Singapore is a model of city living and the challenges we face is a microcosm of other cityscapes. Putting forth a compelling ”Urban Living” proposition would be our key challenge and one potential project comes in the form of a living lab to showcase prototypes of new products that would appeal to modern consumers.

Three Key Pillars behind the Roadmap

Three key pillars: Growth Asia, Urbanite Centricity and Business Agility form the backbone of the roadmap, designed to propel growth and drive greater competitiveness for our furniture industry. Supported by eight initiatives, the roadmap provided a shared strategy amongst SFIC, industry players and government stakeholders.

For a long time, SFIC has been helping members expand their presence globally through trade fairs and other efforts. The new roadmap offers clarity as well as new projects to take the internationalisation drive further while keeping China constantly in its sights. Working in close partnership with relevant lifestyle partners and government agencies, the goal is to make Singapore synonymous with urban living in Asia and plans to create a living lab is in the pipeline.

Since 2008, SFIC has embarked on an industry design-led and design-driven initiative and in the new blueprint, the role of design will be expanded beyond aesthetics to enable the creation of customer-centric, urban living solutions.

In a dynamic business environment aided by ultra-fast technological advancements, the only constant as we all know is change. Speed to market is no longer a luxury for the ”big boys” and business agility is required to continuously exploit market opportunities by rapidly testing, launching, and iterating tomorrow’s urban living solutions.

Even with the best of strategies, the level of success will largely be determined by the industry coming to work together. Owning Urban Living sphere would require a cross-industry collaborative effort. It will take years but the reward will be well worth the effort.

SFIC will be rolling out a slew of projects from a living lab to organising market insights seminars/missions as well as a Digital  Insights Programme, to help industry players to embrace the digital wave to sharpen their competitiveness and expand their markets.

For more information on the roadmap, visit: https://www.singaporefurniture.com/roadmap

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