Industry Overview
The evolvement of furniture has always been linked to needs and purposes. We needed something to sit on; stools, benches and chairs were crafted! To begin with, furniture was made from wood but over the years, as technology has moved on and we have new methods of manufacture, we find that iron, strong metals and plastics are being used to create new and exciting shapes and pieces of furniture. Even strong cardboard is making a comeback…
The Furniture, Furnishings & Interiors (FFI) industry is more than just manufacture; design also features highly in this creative industry.
The industry is traditionally segmented into three primary sectors:
Domestic – serving the public through retail outlets; Office – desking, seating, tables and other office environment items; and Contract – furniture for public areas such as schools, hospitals and hotels. These can be further broken down into the following sub-sectors – cabinet, upholstery, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, restoration, reproduction, soft furnishings and components.
The Furniture, Furnishings & Interiors industry comprises around 12,000 UK workplaces, employing around 147,000 employees.
Over 90% of the industry employs fewer than 50 employees; with 80% employing less than 10.
Almost 90% of the total workforce is based in England.
Proskills works with employers from the Furniture, Furnishings & Interiors Industry to help businesses improve their productivity and competitiveness through skills training. Extensive research and comprehensive employer consultation has identified a need to upskill current and future workforces to enable businesses in this industry to address the challenges they currently face. In particular as the current economic climate forces many businesses to make staff cut backs, there is an increasing need for the remaining workforce to multi-skill.
Skills training is required to help business address the following:
- Skills shortages are particularly prevalent among front line staff, technical staff as well at managerial and supervisory level
- To help businesses ride the storm of the current economic climate and credit crunch, particularly with respect to a drop in demand for products
- The need to meet constantly changing consumer demands and preferences
- To support legislation compliance on Health and Safety as well as Environmental Management
- To improve efficiencies by tightening up processes to tackle the issue of rising energy costs and the need for more energy-efficient machinery and processes
- To drive business performance improvements to increase national and global competitiveness
- To keep up with changes in production and technical technology
- Mergers and acquisitions of UK companies overseas