September 21 (SeeNews) - Romania's Dedalo, an agency representing premium Italian furniture brands, said on Thursday that it expects its turnover from commissions to rise to up to 700,000 euro in 2023 from 500,000 euro in 2022, corresponding to a market value of sold products of over 10 million euro ($10.6 million), despite shrinking sales of residential properties.
According to an analysis made by Dedalo, the Romanian furniture production in the first eight months of 2023 was at 87% of the level recorded a year earlier, while furniture imports amounted to 664.6 million euro in the first five months, compared to 656 million euro in the same period in 2022, the company said in a press release.
"In the first four months of this year, the furniture market experienced a bottleneck, with sales declining amid the general economic situation characterized by high inflation, which reached 16.4% in the last quarter of 2022 and 14.5% in the first quarter of this year. [...] Although the first part of the year started timidly, we saw an increase in sales in May-August and now our target is to increase turnover by at least 20% compared to last year," said Teodora Lazar, founder of Dedalo Agency.
"This year, however, fewer end-users bought apartments, and this segment no longer contributed significantly to sales growth. What has and will help us to reach our sales targets are projects in the business-to-business segment, such as residential buildings that developers are furnishing for rent and those in the HoReCa sector, i.e. hotels, bars and restaurants," Lazar added.
The Romanian furniture market's decline was in part influenced by a contraction in the residential sector, the company said. Apartment sales in Romania fell to 86,000 in the first eight months of this year from 114,000 in the same period of 2022. In Bucharest, apartment sales came in at almost 28,000 units in January- August 2023, compared to 35,500 in the same period of last year.
Founded in 2008, Dedalo Agency is active on the markets of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Moldova.
($=0.938637 euro)