Furniture exporter shifts to other potential markets

CEBU, Philippines – Furniture exporter Heritage Muebles Mirabile Export, Inc., sees potential growth in other export markets other than the United States.

Company president Charles Lim said the company has successfully gained interest from the Australian market, Singaporean, and Middle Easterns.

Heritage Muebles Mirabile Export Inc., has been in the furniture making business for the last 22 years. Lim said immediately after the US economic crunch, the company immediately shifted its focus to non-US markets, and now it sustained its busines while anticipating good growth figures fueled by the entry of emerging markets like Canada, Spain and India.

Lim believes that the furniture making industry is here to stay, specifically that the domestic market is surprisingly catching up with the overseas demand.

Lim's company is one of the survivors of the ailing furniture export industry in Cebu, owing to lingering economic challenges in the United States, which used to be the major market for furniture products from Cebu.

This time, Lim said the company is banking mainly on the creativity of Filipino designers to capture the whim of middle to high-end buyers from Australia, Singapore, Middle East, and now it is expanding to India, Spain and Canada.

"We just have to maintain our integrity in quality, and on time delivery," Lim told The FREEMAN in an interview expressing confidence that the market has not died, but rather only shifted to other countries.

He said US is now dominated by China-made furniture items, thus although the economy will bounce back, larger chunk of US consumer-base will be captured by Chinese furniture makers already.

Moreover, he said the domestic market continues to give life to the furniture sector in general, as local buyers shifted their interest to locally-made export-quality furniture products.

For his company, Lim said orders from local clients are climbing to 50 percent the total plant's production, which means that while export demand from other countries, (except the United States) is growing, the domestic market is catching up. (FREEMAN)