Furnishing, exports fall by 13.1% in January, EU loses 9%
The main markets suffered: France (-6.1%), USA (-28.5%) and Germany (-18.4%). Feltrin: concerned, but confident of a recovery if the situation in Iran improves
The year 2025 closed for the furniture macro-system with EUR 27.7 billion, a figure up on 2024 (+0.9%), despite the slight drop in exports (-0.8%), which account for more than half of the sector's revenues, with a value of EUR 14.2 billion compared to the EUR 13.5 billion generated on the domestic market, according to data released last week by FederlegnoArredo (Fla).
The slowdown in exports is now confirmed by the figures for the first month of the new year and is ringing alarm bells among the sector's companies, which are preparing for the biggest international furniture-design event, the Salone del Mobile in Milan, scheduled from 21 to 26 April in the Rho-Fiera Milano premises.
January's export freeze
The Fla study centre's elaborations describe a strongly worsening scenario, starting with the United States. "The overall decline in this market at the end of 2025 was all in all moderate, around 4.9 per cent. But we were aware that that figure hid much larger decreases starting from the end of the summer, with the official entry into force of the tariffs wanted by President Trump," explains Fla president Claudio Feltrin. The confirmation is a 28.5% drop in January 2026 compared to January 2025, with furniture sales frozen due not only to the new 15% tariffs, but also, and perhaps above all, to the devaluation of the dollar against the euro.
Things are not much better in Europe: France (the leading destination market for Italia's furniture) is down 6.1%, and Germany (which in the last part of 2025 had shown timid signs of recovery, closing the year at -0.1%) even 18.4%, bringing the EU as a whole to -9%, with growth only in Austria and the Czech Republic, markets too small to compensate for the others. Widening the horizon to non-European destinations, the figure for the United Kingdom, which had recorded very strong growth last year, is striking, while in January it fell by 6.7%. China collapsed (-46.6%), which according to many companies in the sector was instead showing signs of recovery after the post-pandemic cool-down. And India, a country on which furniture companies have high hopes, recorded a 41.2% thud.
At a global level, exports thus fell by -13.1% in January compared to the same month in 2025. This is a worrying figure, because it does not yet reflect the effects of the war in Iran, which mainly impacts the Gulf countries, the area from which one of the main contributions to growth in recent years had come, particularly from the United Arab Emirates.
