As of May 2025, the furniture and lighting industry stands at a turning point. While optimism is returning across showrooms and boardrooms, it’s tempered by persistent economic uncertainty and growing operational complexity.
At the Spring High Point Market, a majority of U.S. furniture retailers reported positive expectations for the year ahead, suggesting a potential rebound following a slow start. This sentiment is echoed by the Furniture Today Home Furnishings Index, which indicates cautious momentum early in the year with improving confidence expected midyear.
However, optimism coexists with real headwinds. Persistently high mortgage rates are cooling the housing market, a key driver of furniture purchases. At the same time, shifting trade policies and tariff uncertainty, especially with China and Mexico, are pressuring landed costs and disrupting sourcing strategies. Statista’s U.S. Trade Chart underscores these shifts in import dynamics, with China’s share declining as brands diversify toward nearshoring options.
Meanwhile, digital transformation remains non-optional. U.S. furniture eCommerce revenue is projected to exceed $124 billion by the end of 2025, reinforcing the growing importance of online channels for both B2C and B2B players.
This article explores the top challenges facing the furniture and lighting sector today, internal and external, and technological and what businesses must do to adapt, compete, and grow in the evolving landscape.
The global economy continues to reshape how furniture and lighting brands operate. In 2025, manufacturers and distributors face growing pressure from inflation, changing trade dynamics, and unpredictable cost structures, all of which directly impact margins, pricing strategies, and operational planning.
Manufacturers and distributors grapple with volatile container freight rates, fluctuating raw material prices, and persistent uncertainty around tariffs. These factors directly affect landed costs and make pricing a constant challenge. U.S.–China trade tensions have complicated sourcing strategies, with China still representing a major share of U.S. imports but at declining levels year over year (Statista).
Following the pandemic-fueled boom in home goods, the industry is now navigating a series of demand rollercoasters. Some segments are experiencing strong rebounds, while others are still lagging due to economic uncertainty and high interest rates. According to Furniture Today, many U.S. retailers remain cautiously optimistic about 2025, though actual performance in Q1 has fallen short of expectations (Furniture Today Outlook).
China’s dominance as a furniture supplier is waning, driven by rising labor costs and political uncertainty. As a result, many U.S. furniture brands are diversifying sourcing strategies toward Mexico and Canada, where logistics are more stable and tariffs less aggressive (Statista). This reshuffling introduces new challenges in supplier coordination and cost forecasting.
Even the most in-demand products can’t generate revenue if they’re unavailable. In 2025, furniture and lighting companies continue to face supply chain issues that delay delivery, create mismatches between inventory and demand, and leave sales reps unable to provide accurate lead times. The result? Lost orders, frustrated customers, and excess inventory are tying up cash flow.
Global sourcing introduces unpredictable variables, from port congestion and customs delays to production hold-ups overseas. A lighting brand waiting on electrical components or a furniture distributor reliant on imported frames may find promised timelines slipping by weeks without warning. With long production cycles and limited ability to expedite delivery, businesses struggle to meet buyer expectations, especially for made-to-order or seasonal products.
Some companies overorder to ensure availability to compensate for delays. Others play it safe and end up understocked. Both approaches carry risk. Overstocking leads to bloated warehouses, higher carrying costs, and eventual discounting. Stockouts, on the other hand, result in missed sales and damaged relationships, especially when sales reps pitch products that aren’t available to ship.
Balancing inventory across fast and slow movers, across multiple SKUs, finishes, and configurations, is particularly difficult in the furniture and lighting space, where every product may have dozens of variants.
Disconnected systems and manual tracking make it nearly impossible for sales teams to know what’s truly available. When reps rely on outdated spreadsheets or emailed price lists, they risk selling items that are already gone or ignoring items that are overstocked. Without a live view of inventory across warehouses, showrooms, and in-transit goods, teams operate in the dark, unable to prioritize quick-ship items or give buyers accurate delivery estimates.
Despite rising buyer expectations and increased complexity in catalogs, pricing, and logistics, many furniture and lighting companies still operate on outdated systems or disconnected workflows. These digital and operational gaps hold teams back, reduce agility, and make it harder to scale effectively.
Relying on legacy tools or isolated spreadsheets can’t support the speed or accuracy that today’s sales environments demand. Many businesses patch together pricing sheets, product catalogs, and order forms across multiple apps, creating friction at every stage. Without a centralized system, errors increase, and visibility suffers. What once worked for a small team becomes a liability as operations grow.
An ERP system might track inventory and fulfillment, while a separate CRM houses customer data and sales pipelines, but when they’re not connected, reps lack key context at critical moments.
For example, a salesperson may quote a product without knowing it’s out of stock, or fail to follow up because quote history lives in a different system. This disconnect leads to inefficiencies, rework, and lost deals.
Too many brands still rely on pen-and-paper order capture at trade shows, manually re-enter orders into ERP systems, or chase product specs through email chains. These outdated processes create unnecessary delays, increase error rates, and burn out sales teams that spend more time on admin than actual selling.
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Today’s B2B buyers, whether interior designers, retailers, or contractors, demand speed, accuracy, and personalization. Slow or inconsistent communication can derail deals in an industry where aesthetics matter and assortments are complex. Buyers expect a modern, seamless experience at every touchpoint.
Buyers want curated offers that reflect their project scope, previous purchases, and style preferences. However, reps without access to integrated digital tools or customer insights are forced to pitch generic assortments. This one-size-fits-all approach makes it harder to build trust, reduces upsell opportunities, and weakens customer loyalty over time.
Buyers need clarity from finish options to lead times, especially when products are highly configurable. If a rep references one spec and the fulfillment team sees another, it creates confusion, delays, and frustration. Disconnected data sources often lead to quoting errors, backorders, or missed cross-sell opportunities.
Speed matters. Whether following up on a quote, confirming availability, or sending product tear sheets, delays can cause buyers to lose interest or move forward with a competitor. Reps juggling manual systems often struggle to respond quickly, especially during busy seasons or trade show events. If quoting takes hours or worse, days, leads go cold and deals fall through.
Even with demand in recovery mode, many furniture and lighting businesses struggle to operate efficiently due to internal staffing pressures. From production floors to customer-facing roles, the industry feels the effects of a workforce in transition.
The industry still lacks experienced upholsterers, finishers, and installers, roles essential for maintaining product quality and delivery timelines. As older generations retire, younger workers are slower to fill these specialized roles, creating a bottleneck in production capacity and customization workflows.
Sales reps are often pulled away from selling to handle order entry, inventory checks, and pricing confirmations tasks that could be automated: slower response times, missed opportunities, and increased burnout. Even top performers struggle to focus on what they do best without proper tech enablement: building relationships and closing deals.
As sales teams grow or turnover occurs, onboarding new reps becomes challenging, especially when product data, pricing rules, and customer history are scattered across spreadsheets and inboxes. Without centralized tools and training content, ramp-up time is long, and costly errors are more likely.
Even in a challenging environment, furniture and lighting businesses can unlock growth by improving visibility, speed, and alignment across teams. With the right strategy and technology, common pain points become opportunities to build a stronger foundation.
Disconnected tools slow everyone down. Shifting to a connected ecosystem where product data, inventory, sales, and customer communication flow together helps eliminate errors, reduce delays, and support smarter decision-making at every level.
Accurate inventory data means fewer stockouts, faster quoting, and better forecasting. Real-time insights let teams act confidently and avoid costly fulfillment issues, especially when dealing with complex or seasonal product assortments.
Sales teams need more than pricing sheets. They need visuals, context, and quick access to accurate product information. Equipping reps with mobile-ready tools and customizable content improves response times, increases order accuracy, and helps them sell more strategically.