1. For furniture retail enterprises above designated scale, the retail sales of furniture from January to November increased by 5.5% year on year.

The figure of 5.5% is lower than the national economy's average growth rate of 6.2%. Such slow growth could explain why people universally felt pain in the furniture industry.

From the vertical perspective, the worst month of this year's furniture industry may be October, with a year on year growth rate of only 1.8%. In November, the year-on-year growth rate returned to 6.5%, bringing the cumulative growth rate from January to November back with 0.1%.

From the horizontal perspective, the furniture industry is not the most miserable one. The building material industry registered a negative growth of -0.3% year-on-year in November; With a growth rate of only 3% from January to November. It can be seen that there is more competitive pressure in the building material industry which is easier to carry out large-scale production. In fact, throughout the consumption of first eleven months, there was few industries with a negative growth. Most of industries were with a certain amount of growth.

Overall, the furniture industry's capacity to withstand pressure is not the worst.

2. The sales volume of residential commercial housing, which is most closely related to the furniture industry, increased by 10.7% year on year from January to November in 2017. The total was RMB12.17 trillion.

Residential sales were up sharply, suggesting that the volume of future furniture sales can be assured. But the problem is that it is not only furniture enterprises that sell furniture to new owners, but also real estate enterprises, furniture factories and factories jointly built by real estate developers, decoration enterprises and individual designers. Even customized enterprises have become traditional furniture enterprises, making traditional finished furniture enterprises the most vulnerable group.

Even China is continuing to depress the real estate market, the situation of this market is quite optimistic. Several other data reflecting the real estate situation also show that the future development of this industry is still good.

From January to November, the construction area of residential buildings increased by 10.1% year on year. From January to November, Investment in residential real estate rose 14.4% year on year. From January to November, the newly started area of residential buildings increased by 9.3% year on year.

These data reflect that there is no problem in the supporting role of the real estate industry to the furniture industry in the future. The problem is that there are too many participants.

3. From January to November this year, the online retail sales of physical goods reached RMB7603.2 billion, up 19.7%. If the growth in sales of online services is taken into account, China's online retail sales totaled RMB9495.8 billion, up 16.6 percent year on year, 0.2 percentage points higher than that from January to October.

From January to November this year, the online retail sales of physical goods accounted for 20.4% of the total retail sales of consumer goods, 2.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year. One in five items is sold online. The growth rate of real estate sales is very fast, reaching 10.7%; But the sales growth of large-scale retail furniture enterprises is only 5.5%, where is the lost increment?

The diversification of physical channels is indeed a reason, but the most important reason is probably the loss to virtual sales, that is, network sales.

From January to November, the development investment of commercial business housing decreased by 7.3%; the construction area of commercial business Housing decreased by 2.1%; the newly started area decreased by 5.0%; the sales area decreased by 14.1%; and the sales volume decreased by 13.5%. Compared with the high-speed growth of residential buildings, commercial business housing, both at present and in the future, is showing a comprehensive decline. This has to be a dark side of Internet sales.

These three figures, in fact, profoundly reveal the current situation and future of the furniture industry.