FurnitureRoots manufactures & supplies furniture from their factory and large retail store based in Jodhpur to hotels, restaurants, cafes, pubs, resorts and several other hospitality & commercial businesses in addition to being an exporter & manufacturer of novel & themed furniture items like automobile furniture, aviator furniture & coastal furniture.
We at TechStory have been in touch with executives at FurnitureRoots and they’ve explained in great depth, a bit on India’s history with furniture & the way forward with technological initiatives that they’ve undertaken.
The idea of Indian furniture & furnishings as a lifestyle began to accentuate itself in several parts of the country & rapidly spread to even the remotest parts of the country. Traditional furniture styles that were reserved only for the royalties soon began making way into middle class households as well.
This also gave way to several furniture manufacturing hubs in the country a few pockets in around the capital city & places like Jodhpur in Rajasthan witnessed a startling growth in furniture output.
Fast forward to today & things are rather different, while furniture is not exactly an ailing sector in India, it isn’t exactly a thriving sector in India either. When stacked against comparable economies, our furniture exports seem insignificant. Of course, this is also another area where China has dominated most lists.
But the governments push towards increasing manufacturing output of the country has been welcomed by several furniture companies, including FurnitureRoots that are ramping up their technological capabilities through changes in manufacturing technology and through consistent digitization
1. Digitization
Furniture buying in India is not considered a small ticket purchase, it is mostly a well calculated decision by heads of families. It is only recently that the online furniture market has been able to make inroads into the middle class & upper-middle class segments urban pockets of the country.
So far many of them have thrived and seeing this growth opportunity they are not shy of investing in further technologies to improve the customer’s buying experience and instil a sense of security & comfort for the customers.
In this case, there is no reason to treat a business buyer as any different, towards this effect the company has invested in digital technology efforts including augmented reality in pursuit of matching the online buying experience with a physical one.
2. Marketing Technologies
Having the ability to create some great quality products is only half the battle. The biggest challenge is to be able to sell them effectively to customers. These challenges are further compounded when one tries to sell to an international audience with differences in language, cultures & preferences.
However, with novel digital initiatives, like on-site language translation & and several other minute details, these issues can be overcome to reach a larger potential market.
3. Manufacturing Technology
In order to compete with various other developed economies, technological capabilities to reduce cost and improve product quality is critical. Towards this effect, we have ramped up efforts to limit human intervention only to the design and visual tasks while simultaneously investing in novel methods to automate monotonous tasks.
“While we are keenly observing the trends in technologies like 3-D printing to amplify this further, we are fairly confident that in the current state of things, we are at par with competition in developed countries”, – says founder & CEO of FurnitureRoots, Dhritiman Ranawat
As the majority of the company’s focus is towards the hospitality furniture industry, which includes furniture. One visit to the company’s factory in Sangariya, situated near Jodhpur-Pali Highway, is enough for most to know about the changes being brought about in manufacturing technology by the company.
4. Supply Chain Initiatives
The furniture industry is surprisingly susceptible to any changes in the shipping & logistics industry as a good portion of the cost includes freight cost. This is being mitigated by experimentation in newer technologies around packaging methods in order to reduce damages and also through deep integrations in technology with leading logistics players to automate several tasks, avoid human errors & improve delivery times as well.
The team is hopeful that these ingenuities will pay off in the long run both in terms of a better experience to customers and by being able to compete with global players for furniture exports.
