When I moved out, I decided to sell off most of what I owned and furnish my new apartment pretty much from scratch. I wanted my space to have a new, more grown-up look like the design and influencer accounts I follow on Instagram.
I knew I would not want to spend days or even weeks waiting in a bare apartment for furniture and decor to be delivered, so I started to do online furniture shopping about a month before my move-in date. I started pinning decor aesthetics I loved on Pinterest and shopping around for pieces that fit the look I wanted on sites like Soul & Tables. Once I purchased an area rug and some nightstands, a customised email from the seller hit my inbox with bookshelves and dressers in matching finishes to the furniture I had already bought. So convenient!
And while scrolling online, I saw the perfect teak wood in Singapore with a clickable link to the e-commerce platform that sold it. Sweet! Before I knew it, I had a fully furnished apartment, complete with stylish pieces sourced online and all delivered for free. And I did it all on a budget and without stepping foot inside a furniture showroom.
This is just one example that shows how millennials have reshaped how people shop for and buy furniture. The rise of the internet and e-commerce has had a massive effect on the furniture industry, and millennials have embraced those changes wholeheartedly.
And retailers who do not adapt to fit millennials’ new ways of shopping risk being left behind by the age group that currently holds the largest share of buying power in Singapore, hundreds of billions of dollars worth. If your e-commerce store sells furniture, these are the things that I liked about Souls & Tables that you need to check out as an example.
Gen Z is up and coming, but for now, millennials are the age group that currently lead buying power. Millennials also currently make a large percent of households that buy furniture, and during these years, we spend a lot of money too on home furnishings. Simply put, we are the biggest market furniture retailers can capture right now. We also come with some new challenges compared to prior generations.
In order to understand how we have changed the furniture shopping game, you have to understand the big ways that millennial furniture buyers are different from past generations. The biggest way that millennials differ from past generations is in our online shopping habits. Because we tend to do so much shopping online, we also tend to be big comparison shoppers. What this means for retailers: Even if you are primarily a brick-and-mortar store, having an e-commerce arm is essential to bringing in millennial shoppers. It is also more important than ever to go omnichannel, creating a consistent shopping experience for millennials who want to shop in stores, online, on social media, and via other channels.
Compared to past generations, we tend to have less disposable income and tend to be more mobile, moving our households more often than Gen X or Boomers did. Because of that, we tend to look for furniture like kitchen furniture items that are smaller and less expensive and treat furniture items as disposable rather than long-term investments, like generations before them. We also tend to favour furniture pieces that are compact, multifunctional, or integrated with technology. What this means for retailers: When marketing to us, smaller and less expensive items are likely to be more appealing. Marketing urban and apartment-friendly pieces that are compact and multifunctional will also attract millennial shoppers.
We want and expect free shipping on all our online furniture shopping purchases now, including furniture. And that is whether we buy it online or in a showroom. What this means for retailers: If free shipping is not a viable offer your company can make, you will have to entice millennials some other way.
When it comes to online furniture purchases, I personally like to have as much information about the products I am buying as possible, from fabrics, colours, and patterns available, to exact product dimensions, to manufacturing information, to shipping options, to related products. One of the keys to capturing millennial shoppers is giving them all the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions, even when they’re buying online.
Sure, we have reshaped the way we buy furniture, and we are the largest shopping and buying population for now. New generations are up and coming all the time, though, and change doesn’t stop here. Embracing the ways millennials have reshaped this industry will position furniture sellers to be ready for new technologies and new marketing strategies the way Souls & Table has.
For my fellow millennials, if you need kitchen furniture pieces in Singapore, I suggest you check out Souls & Table’s website now, they’re cool and convenient, they are all you need.
