Patio Furnishings, a Promising Future

The outdoor market in the US can be broken down into four categories: Outdoor furniture (with 57% of the market); grills (20%); accessories including textile products (19%); and patio heating products (4%). The market is forecasted to reach US $ 7.2 billion in 2013.

Not too long ago options for patio or outdoor furniture and furnishings were very limited and usually involved assortment of chairs in metal or plastic and a table with an umbrella hole in the middle of it. However, new-found attention paid to outdoor areas and with new ways of weatherproofing it has opened up options to all sorts of furniture and furnishing styles including use of textile. Today, patio furnishings are a growing segment as it gives more cheerful look and comfort to the garden furniture. Though the market presents huge growth opportunities there are very few manufacturers in India who are producing patio furnishings. While some buyers feel that the reason is the lack of knowledge about the product category, others opine that the industry is incapable of handling the specific requirements of the segment…

Garden cushions that are fade resistant, manufactured by Sanjay International for their buyers

Besides the traditional hard furniture and awnings, garden umbrellas, hammock, soft furnishing like cushions, table linen, runners, chair pads all come under the category of outdoor furnishings with enhanced performance properties in the fabrics used in these furnishings as these are exposed to sunlight, dewdrops, and at times rains and snow too! The category is a bestseller for many leading international retailers like Ikea, Walmart, Kmart, Sears and some exclusive stores for garden furnishing like Sun Garden, Brick to mention a few prominent ones that are sourcing substantial volumes of patio furnishings from China.

Even though, one of India’s biggest buying offices, Impulse International, is sourcing patio furnishing for its lead buyer Sun Garden, India is not the major provider for the category. Satyender Shukla, heading the home furnishing division at Impulse shared with Apparel Online that most of the products falling under the category are sourced from China, as the fabric mostly used in garden furnishing products are polyester since they can stand high levels of exposure to sunlight. In this quality of fabric, China is far cheaper than India and also there are very few specialized suppliers for this product in the country. “Sun Garden had never sourced from India, but when they wanted to match the fabrics of garden awnings they sourced out of China, which was in polyesters with a table linen in cotton, it became a challenge for us. The challenge was not only to match the cotton linen with polyester awnings, but also to match the prints with yarn dyed weaving. So we moved to Kannur (Kerala) where we could get the desired quality; whatever they gave us in polyester, we matched it to the ‘T’. They showed it at Heimtextil and it did extremely well. Since then Sun Garden is a regular though small volume buyer; they just do table linen with us but it’s a very unique business,” says Satyender.

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The outdoor furnishing sector in Europe has grown relatively faster than the furniture market in last 10 years. The products are mainly being sourced from Asia, primarily from China.

Fabrics for outdoor decor should have excellent stain and fade resistance along with fast drying to help avoid structural damage due to sunlight, water or mud. [/bleft]

There are very few manufacturers in this niche market, one of them is Sanjay International, a Ghaziabad based home furnishing exporter catering to mainly Walmart, Kmart, JCPenney, Indigo Homes, producing garden furnishings such as cushions for outdoor decorative chairs, chair pads, table covers and placemats. In a recent interaction with Apparel Online Rajiv Ajmera Managing Director, Sanjay International stressed the importance of R&D and technical textiles in handling the product category. “For outdoor furnishings good colour fastness is very important as the products are constantly exposed to sunlight. Though polyester is the favoured fabric, cotton can also be used but it should be treated well in terms of giving performance finishes so that the colours do not fade away fast, besides being tough enough to be able to wither various climatic conditions,” reasoned Rajiv.

According to Rajiv a lot of R&D is being done internationally for outdoor furnishings. Now patio cushions are being made with open cell structure which allows water to pass through easily. This drainable property is perfect for areas in which cushions may get wet. “You simply tip the cushion on end and watch the water run out. Leave them in the sun for a few minutes and they’re ready to sit on,” explains Rajiv who started home furnishing business in 1995.

Satyender feels that anyone who is manufacturing furnishing products can easily start this product category as there is a lot of scope of marketing this product. “Not just the retailers but a lot of patio furnishings are used by hospitality industry like hotels, spas and the likes who give volume orders,” he concludes.