--By Rashika Pokharel

 

With one and half year of establishment, Index Furniture has gained popularity among its customers by offering elegant and stylish furniture and standard customer services. It presently claims to own 15 per cent of furniture market share and continues to refurbish its collection. "In order to meet the increasing demand of customers, we have recently added more home decorative items, expanding our Lenin section, renovating our showroom and announce annual sale on August 15", says its Marketing Manager, Nikhil Tuladhar adding that the renovation will give a face lift to the showroom while introducing new furnishing items during the sale. 

 

Presently it has two outlets in Kathmandu valley—Jawalakhel and Lazimpat and has no expansion plans up its sleeve for the near future.  "Our flooring is pretty big and it covers the market. If the market grows in future then probably we will expand our business," said Tuladhar.

 

Products offered by Index

Index Furniture has wide range of quality, stylish and diverse furniture to cater to the varied and unique needs of its customer. Its modern, graceful and elegant bedroom sets, living room sets, kids and teen sets, living room sofa sets and dining tables and chairs are popular among its customers. Decorative items at the store start from Rs 200 and some of its sofa sets cost around Rs 3, 50,000.

 

International Presence

Index Furniture is the franchise of the Thailand based furniture retailer, Index Living Mall (ILM). ILM has presence in 9 countries and is the 7th franchise in Nepal. Previously, manufacturer to different countries and used to supply different products to different companies. Later, it became successful establishing itself as a separate showroom and today it has become a brand in itself.

 

Starting with a showroom in December 2002, Index Furniture has 25 stores in Thailand and has been expanding rapidly.”The main reason behind bringing Index furniture to Nepal is to open large scale franchise in South East Asia," Tuladhar said. It has franchises in Russia, Dubai, Vietnam, Maldives, Malaysia, India, among other nations.

 

Target customers

The store has wide range of furniture targeted at the middle and upper class customers. "There is a misconception prevailing in our society that upper class people only can afford stylish furniture. But it is not actually true. We have very wide range of furniture targeted to the middle class people as well. Our medium range products are very affordable. The prices of our products are same like other products in the market", said Tuladhar. Along with furnishing homes, it also provides wide range of office furniture.

 

Challenges and Opportunities in Furniture Market

Tuladhar finds Nepali furniture market expanding at a great pace while also becoming very competitive and tough. People still embrace conventional habit of appointing carpenters to make their furniture, with the impression that they durable and cheaper than readymade furniture. He claims that traditional at times can be durable than modern furniture but claims that modern people prefer to keep changing their furniture instead of using the same set through their life. The store responds to this modern trend by providing modern and contemporary furniture to its customers.

 

In terms of price, Tuladhar claims that high fluctuation in raw materials makes prices of custom furniture highly unpredictable. The traditional carpenters hold a big market in Nepal and they are popular despite the difficulty in getting the raw materials and delivery delay. Index furniture has been using these factors to its advantage by providing products and services to its customer at faster pace.