Recently, US office furniture giant Knoll released its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2020 as of December 31 last year.

The report shows that Knoll's net sales in the fourth quarter were $312.9 million, a year-on-year decrease of 15.8%. In terms of sub-sectors, the office furniture department’s net sales were US$185.8 million, a year-on-year decrease of 18.9%; while the lifestyle department’s net sales were US$127.1 million, a year-on-year decrease of 10.6%.

Knoll's total net sales for the year were US$1.236 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 13.4%. Net sales of the office furniture department and lifestyle department decreased by 11.2% and 16.9% year-on-year respectively.

Affected by the raging COVID-19 pandemic in the past year, many companies’ office spaces cannot be opened normally, and employees can only work from home. This has caused many office furniture manufacturers with companies as their main customers to face the dilemma of shrinking revenue. In contrast, the proportion of retail customers has risen sharply.

Knoll pointed out in the financial report that in the fourth quarter of 2020, sales revenue to end retail customers reached 107 million US dollars, an increase of 34% year-on-year, and accounted for more than one-third of total sales revenue. For the whole year, the company's sales revenue for terminal retail customers was US$335 million, an increase of over 20% year-on-year.

Although the current source structure of sales revenue has changed significantly from before, Knoll believes that this does not mean that office space will completely disappear in the future. On the contrary, Knoll is preparing for employees to return to the workplace.

With the gradual advancement of the current COVID-19 vaccination work, Knoll expects that the purchase demand for office furniture by enterprises will continue to decline in the first half of 2021, but by the third quarter of this year, market demand will stabilize and achieve rebound growth in the fourth quarter.

At the same time, through market research and surveys, Knoll predicts that people's needs for workplaces will also undergo significant changes-in the post-epidemic era, workplaces will achieve the integration of the two functions of "on-site office" and "virtual collaboration", which emphasizes independent office work while ensuring safe and effective interaction and cooperation between colleagues.