Furniture companies, risk of default rises. But the sector is solid

Italian furniture companies confirmed the soundness of their economic-financial fundamentals in 2025. Credit risk has risen slightly, it is true (+0.3% in the first nine months compared to the same period of the previous year), but the default rate remains in the safety zone (3.2%), i.e. below the 4% threshold of the pre-pandemic years and entirely in line with the national average figure (3.4%, also up by 0.3%).

In terms of the amounts disbursed, the sector also follows the trend observed at a general level, with a 13.8% increase (compared to 13.7% overall) recorded by the Crif Observatory in the first nine months of 2025 for capital companies, which account for 40% of the approximately 18,000 companies monitored by the Bologna-based company.

"Of course, these figures do not take into account what happened from 28 February onwards, with the war in Iran and the possible consequences on the world economy, which are difficult to predict today," explains Luca D'Amico, CEO of Crif Ratings. "As of today, we do not make estimates, but it is inevitable to expect an increase in riskiness in all productive sectors.

Not least because the furniture industry stands out for its strong propensity to export, which has been the main lever for company growth for almost 20 years. Suffice it to say that, according to the Internationalisation Score compiled by Crif, 34% of furniture companies have a high level of foreign vocation, compared to just 4% for total Italian companies. A double-edged sword in an economic and geopolitical phase characterised by so many uncertainties: the slowdown of the Chinese giant, the closure of the Russian market, US tariffs and, now, the crisis in the Middle East, which puts at risk a market with high potential value, which in recent years had made a decisive contribution to compensating for the slowdown in other geographies.

"In 2025, the evolution of the sector's riskiness was mainly influenced by a difficult international market context, on which weighed a worsening and uncertain geopolitical scenario, and by a growing level of competition on the domestic market," Crif explains. On the latter weighs the pressure exerted by Chinese producers, which is particularly impacting on the mass market segment and, therefore, on the price policies applied. Positive signals are coming from the exports of Italian operators in the sector, who have always seen the international markets as one of their main outlets, which have been stable albeit with very different performances at the level of individual national end markets".