Wood Furnishing System ITALY-RUSSIA Foreign Trade

Before the global financial downturn, the home Classic Design furnishing market in Russia had grown exponentially, with almost 30% of all Russian furniture consisting of imports. Over the last few years, until the financial crisis hit (2008), Russian expenditure on furniture was growing at a healthy rate. The top supplier of furniture to the Russian market was, and still is, Italy. This competition has been building at quite a rate, especially from other foreign suppliers such as China, which supplies roughly 20% of Russian imports, and from Russian manufacturers themselves.

The data for Italian Wood Furnishing exports to Russia from 1993 to the present day clearly show that values rose consistently, passing the billion euro mark in 2008. However, after hitting a positive peak two years ago, the data for 2009 and 2010 reflect the credit crunch that gripped the global market, Russia included. Losses of -34.4% were recorded in 2009 compared with the previous year. In 2010, the Russian growth trend picked up again and the sector closed 0.4% up; the trend continued into the first few months of 2011 with an impressive 17.3% rise in exports.