Reshaping home furniture
Dedicated work desks and chairs are the rage as Asia-Pacific stays productive amid COVID-19
Susana Harding, a development worker in Singapore, bought an ergonomic chair when her employer imposed work-from-home arrangements to help curb COVID-19. As director of International Longevity Center, Harding sits in front of her computer throughout the day, researching and writing about issues affecting the city state’s elderly.
“I had to buy (an ergonomic) chair, one that will allow me to sit for eight hours without hurting my back unnecessarily,” Harding said, citing her long history of back pain.
Harding converted the guest room in her 84-square-meter apartment into a home office and has been working from there since February.
“I have the space and the equipment at home already in place, including a printer, shredder and a dedicated Wi-Fi connection. So actually, working from home is a breeze to me.”
Harding is among thousands of professionals throughout Asia-Pacific who have been working from home for months since governments in the region imposed lockdowns and social distancing measures to cope with the pandemic.
“An important measure taken by governments across the world to contain the spread of COVID-19 is to encourage those who can work from home to do so,” the International Labor Organization said, noting this as one way of promoting physical distancing.
With most offices and even coworking spaces shut, employees in Asia needed to think of ways to replicate their workspaces. Some, like Harding, have transformed extra rooms in their homes into makeshift offices. But the easiest, most affordable way for most workers who do not have this luxury to remain productive is to buy office desks and chairs.
Home design and furniture industry companies expect the work-fromhome trend to continue in the next few months, boosting demand for office furniture in Asia. The new demand will come from private households that never had to buy such furniture before.
“We are spending so much time at home now and (are starting to realize) the advantage of having a proper home office setup,” said Pauline Wetzer, founder of Hong Kong-based furniture leasing company Foerni.
Launching her startup in August, Wetzer noticed that her most popular items are standing desks and ergonomic office chairs.
“They are popular products right now because these are the things that you don’t usually have at home,” she said.
Wetzer’s observations in Hong Kong are not an isolated trend. Across the Asia-Pacific region, home-based employees have been buying office furniture as dining chairs and kitchen
countertops are not designed for long hours of desk-bound work.
In Melbourne, Australia, swivel chairs and standing desks were in short supply in March due to high demand among home-bound employees, a report by The Age newspaper said.
Japanese furniture companies Itoki and Kokuyo saw sales rise significantly in the fiscal year ending March 31 from home-based workers’ increased demand for office desks and chairs, a report by Nikkei Asian Review said. Kokuyo’s sales of office chairs alone increased by 150 percent compared with those of 2015.
Indian conglomerate Godrej Group’s furniture manufacturing arm Godrej Interio reported higher demand for work-from-home furniture amid a nationwide lockdown, according to the New Delhi newspaper the Hindustan Times. Subodh Mehta, Godrej Interio’s senior vicepresident, said the two items popular among home-based workers are a work desk with a separate hutch and swivel arm that allows more than one person to use it at the same time; and a chaise longue that lets people stretch out while working on laptops and tablets.
The London financial technology company Revolut said sales of the Singapore outlets of furniture retailers Courts and Ikea more than doubled in February and March as Singaporeans started setting up home-based workstations amid the pandemic.
Mauro Spinelli, senior expert and partner at the research and consulting firm Centre for Industrial Studies in Milan, Italy, said new purchases of office furniture “reflect a general dissatisfaction” among newly homebased employees doing their jobs in spaces not meant for work.
Spinelli said that most home-based employees — in a global survey that his firm conducted — have complained
about their current work chairs.
“The vast majority of respondents use a standard chair with no ergonomic properties,” he said, noting that the respondents sometimes worked on couches. This, he said, is not ideal for dealing with back problems.
While ergonomic furniture spans many items, Spinelli said the ergonomic chair, which offers back support and helps one’s posture, will remain a “pivotal” item for homebased workers.
“The purchase of a swivel chair is considered a priority now for consumers,” he said. Other in-demand items include office desks and desk lamps.
Before the pandemic, Asia-Pacific was already among the fastest growing markets for home furniture. Steady economic growth over the years has increased homeownership and created a bigger middle class that can splurge on new homeware.
According to Euromonitor International, the Asia-Pacific region is the largest global market for home furnishings in terms of value and the fastest-growing from 2013 to 2018.
“Asia-Pacific is seeing good growth in housing stock and the number of households, benefiting sales of home furnishings,” Euromonitor said in a report published in February. “Growth is further supported by rising disposable incomes. The increasingly sophisticated preferences of households and rising interest in creating comfortable and attractive homes offer good opportunities in home furnishings.”
Experts said that while COVID-19 affected demand for home furniture, it has also offered companies opportunities to innovate vis-a-vis new consumer trends.
Global measurement and data analytics firm Nielsen said in a recent report that the “homebody reset” is one of the new drivers of consumption patterns. As COVID-19 encourages
staying home, Nielsen said, consumers are now giving priority to in-home spending over discretionary out-of-home expenses.
Vaughan Ryan, Nielsen’s managing director for Consumer Intelligence Asia, said the “homebody reset” in Asia-Pacific will involve more online sales, given high internet usage and mobile phone ownership in the region. This is prevalent as Asians are more conscious of health and well-being, he said, given previous experiences with such public health crises as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak.
Salvio Valenzuela, executive director of the Chamber of Furniture Industries of the Philippines, said the cancellation of the annual Philippine International Furniture Show set for March may have hurt local manufacturers and exporters, but the pandemic is the time “to finally focus on innovation”.
Companies are addressing this shift. Godrej Interio has a home office collection that includes a compact study table which fits small spaces and a high-back chair with adjustable armrests. Itoki sells desks that allow people to work while seated or standing. Koala Furniture of Australia released a compact desk that can be folded up after work.
“I definitely see more people investing in home office furniture, and, yes, work-from-home is the new normal,” said Rachelle Medina, a consultant with the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, the export promotion arm of the Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry.
Medina, a Manila-based interior decorator, said numerous friends and colleagues have inquired about designing home workspaces. She advised them to buy ergonomic chairs and a dedicated work table to remain productive and comfortable.
Working mothers like her also must
consider their children’s study space as online classes have become the norm, she said.
Daxue Consulting, a market research and management consulting firm in China, sees a rise in both home-office and children’s furniture following the rise of online classes.
Even before the pandemic, demand for children’s furniture had been rising in China for the past few years.
“As living standards improve, parents are increasingly willing to buy suitable furniture to create a good environment for their children’s development,” the Hong Kong Trade Development Council said in a report in August.
The pandemic is expected to boost this demand. Hu Yuwan, chief operating officer of Daxue, said she expects more Chinese customers to buy home office furniture for both adults and children.
“Children’s education is one of the priorities of Chinese families,” she said, noting that a middle-class family allocates over 30 percent of its monthly income to children’s education.
It is therefore important that furniture makers and retailers also consider children’s needs and interests when marketing home-office furniture, Hu said.
Asian governments have been easing lockdowns and movement restrictions. With offices reopening, some home-based employees are returning to work.
But experts say COVID-19 has changed the working environment. While they do not see all employees working entirely from home, they expect companies to implement partial work-from-home arrangements under the new normal.
Spinelli of the Centre for Industrial Studies said that even before the outbreak pushed employees to work at home, telecommuting had been rising for the past decade as technology enables more remote work.