Furniture retailing. How a first-generation entrepreneur from Theni built a national furniture brand

First-generation entrepreneur, Vijai Subramaniam, who hails from Theni, Tamil Nadu, and changed furniture retailing in India, reminisces the success story of home appliances and electronic gadgets in the country.

After doing a couple of odd jobs in marketing, Vijai found an untapped opportunity in the furniture industry. Finding the highly organised traditional industry stuck in the age-old, inefficient manufacturing practices, he set up a RoyalOak store in Bengaluru.

“For the next 5-6 years, I confined myself to the city. I just added five more stores in those six years. But, then I started expanding rapidly,” Vijai, Chairman of RoyalOak, told businessline.

In Hyderabad, recently for the opening of the company’s 148th store and 18th in the city, he talked about the inefficiencies in the existing manufacturing practices in the furniture industry and how he replicated the strategy that home appliances and electronic gadget companies used about two decades.

“Companies like Apple source components elsewhere to make their products. But the furniture industry is still stuck in the age-old practice of manufacturing sofas, dining tables, or chairs – all in one factory,” he explains.

Also read: IKEA India drops prices of products in the range of 16-39% across several categories

This, according to him, is the reason for the absence of variety and product innovation in the industry, which is dominated by the unorganised sector. “The unorganised sector still holds 95 per cent of the total business in this space. Urban areas are better off because they have a good number of shops and variety. People in small cities and rural areas don’t have that luxury,” he said.

“This is quite inefficient as you can’t produce all the products in one place. In the global furniture industry, each country excels in one particular product or design. For example, Malaysia is known for rubber wood, fabric, and workmanship. Turkey is known for its fabric, Vietnam for teakwood products, and China for its glass work” he says.

One Country One Product

“We have identified the best product from a country and started getting the product manufactured there to our design. We source products from 280 factories in different parts of the world. This is the reason we are able to offer a wide variety of products at our stores,” he says.

At RoyalOak, customers can expect the best furnishing products from across the world right in their city. “You can have an Italian bed in one bedroom and a Malaysian one in the other, while the living room can have designs from the US. Customers want to flaunt unique pieces and we attend to this unmet demand,” he says.

Expansion

RoyalOak is going to open 100 more stores in FY24, including 3-4 stores abroad. “We are already exporting to some countries, which contribute about 5 per cent to our revenues. We are looking to open stores in China, South Africa, and Australia this year,” he said.

The company registered a turnover of about ₹1,000 crore in FY23, growing at 45 per cent over the previous year’s turnover.

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