Sustainability

Furniture Industry Trend Forecast

Sustainability is not just a category of change, but also a mega trend itself (Trend One, n.d.d). At its centre is the protection of the earth and its resources (The Institute for Sustainability, 2017). For businesses this leads to a request for sustainable and collaborative processes and requires them to be accountable for the impact of all their actions (Kjaer, 2014). A main driver behind this request is the rise of ethical consumption, where consumers realise the power of their purchasing choices and increasingly value low emission products produced fairly (Trend One, n.d.e). Especially millennials, with a continuously growing purchasing power, drive this trend, as 73% of them are willing to spend more on sustainable products (Nielsen, 2019).

The sustainability mega shift has manifestations in many different macro trends across industries ranging from the so-called circular economy, envisioning the setup of manufacturing process that allow a complete reuse of all resources to minimise waste production (Kjaer, 2014) to the establishment of a sharing economy, a system that grants access to goods instead of ownership especially driven by the generation of millennials (Goldman Sachs, 2019). Then, there is a rise of the repair culture, based on initiatives that try to fight the ‘throwaway culture’ (Lyons, 2018) and an even greater movement of zero waste lifestyle trying to avoid any kind of rubbish (Chapman, 2017). Beside that manufacturers optimise their carbon footprint through localisation of value chains (Andresen, 2019) and there are even first movements in the field of localising production in worldwide networks (Opendesk, n.d.).

It is argued that the aspect making furniture most sustainable is its longevity (Bossard, 2019), but beyond that there are many ways for its incorporation in the design, its manufacturing and use as promoted e.g. by the Sustainable Furnishings Council (2019). From the following overview two trends will be in focus:

• Furniture from sustainable materials

• Renting of furniture