Walk any US furniture retailer's sourcing desk in 2026 and you'll hear the same word repeated like a mantra: Vietnam. The wooden bedframe, the upholstered sofa, the rattan accent chair — a decade ago they shipped out of Guangdong. Today the container leaves Bình Dương. The 2025 numbers just made that shift official: Vietnam now owns 45.3% of the US wooden-furniture market, up from 40.5% a year earlier, and it's still rewriting which suppliers win and which buyers are up for grabs.
For an SME exporter making office desks, outdoor sets, ceramic vases or hand-knotted rugs, this is not abstract macro noise. It's a map of exactly where demand is moving — and the buyers chasing it are findable, by name, in the shipment record.
The 30-second version
- Vietnam's wood & furniture exports hit a record $17.2B in 2025 (+6% YoY), with the US absorbing $9.46B of it — about 55% of the total.
- Vietnam's share of the US wooden-furniture market jumped to 45.3% in 2025 (from 40.5% a year earlier) as Chinese TEU bookings collapsed from ~44K/week to the low-20Ks after May 2025.
- India's handicraft exports ran at $903M in Q1 FY2025-26 (Apr–Jun 2025); the USA took 38.7% of FY2024-25's $3.89B total.
- The global furniture market is pegged near $829–832B in 2026; the global home-decor market reached $810.5B in 2025.
- A 25% US tariff on imported furniture (plus 10% on softwood) took effect Oct 14, 2025 — reshuffling sourcing through 2026.
The China+1 furniture migration is real, and it's measurable
Start with the demand. US furniture imports (HS 94) topped $25 billion in 2024, and the appetite hasn't cooled — per VIZION's analysis of US import data, the question through 2025 was never how much, but from where. That's where the upheaval lives.
China's slide is steep and visible in the booking data. Chinese furniture shipments to the US peaked above 44,000 TEUs per week in May 2025 — a classic tariff front-load — then cratered into the 19K–23K TEU range once duties bit, VIZION reports. Vietnam, by contrast, held steady at 12K–15K TEUs and kept climbing in share. The US opened a Section 232 furniture investigation in August 2025, and on October 14, 2025 imposed a 25% tariff on furniture products and 10% on softwood — pressure that lands hardest on the origin already losing ground.
The furniture buyer who sourced 80% from China in 2019 is, in 2026, splitting orders across Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Malaysia — and actively auditioning new suppliers for the categories they haven't re-homed yet.
That last clause is the opportunity. Every retailer rebalancing away from one origin is a buyer in play — for wooden furniture, office furniture, home furniture and metal furniture alike.
Vietnam: from challenger to the wooden-furniture throne
Vietnam didn't just benefit from China's troubles — it built the capacity to absorb the demand. Vietnam's wood and furniture exports set a record $17.2 billion in 2025, up 6% year-on-year, reports Panels & Furniture Asia. Wooden furniture alone drove roughly 61% of that (~$9.4B), and the US remained the engine: exports to America reached $9.46 billion in 2025 (+4.4% YoY), about 55% of Vietnam's entire wood-export turnover. Hanoi has set an $18.5B target for 2026.
For exporters in adjacent categories, the lesson is the structure of the trade, not just the totals. Wooden furniture, office furniture and home furniture move in container volume to a concentrated set of big US importers. Rattan and cane furniture — Vietnam's quieter natural-materials line — feeds the same outdoor and casual-living buyers chasing bamboo, cane and woven looks. If you make outdoor furniture, metal furniture or rattan/cane goods, the importers booking Vietnamese product are your most qualified prospect list: they've already proven appetite and logistics for exactly your product type.
India: handicrafts, carpets and the home-decor lane
India plays a different but complementary game — high craft value, not pure volume. India's handicraft exports ran at $903 million in Q1 FY2025-26 (April–June 2025), per IBEF citing EPCH data, off a FY2024-25 base of $3.89 billion. The category breakdown reads like a home-decor catalogue: in that first quarter, woodwares hit ~$242M, art metal wares ~$121M, and embroidered & crocheted goods ~$115M, with handprinted textiles, lamps and lighting, ceramic accessories and decorative items filling out the rest.
The buyer concentration is striking: the USA alone accounted for 38.7% of India's handicraft exports in FY2024-25. Carpets and rugs tell the same story — handmade and silk carpet shipments to the US ran past $297 million in the April–July FY2025-26 window. So whether the product is carpets and rugs, ceramic accessories, lamps and lighting, vases, wall art or home furnishings, the demand center is the same American importer base that's simultaneously rebalancing its furniture sourcing. One market, two doors — and we help India's exporters find and open both abroad.
The market is big enough that precision beats spray-and-pray
Zoom out and the prize is enormous. The global furniture market is estimated near $831.6 billion in 2026 (Straits Research puts it at $829.1B) — a market growing in the mid-single digits with Asia-Pacific holding the lion's share of production. The global home decor market is comparable in scale, reaching $810.5 billion in 2025 and tracking toward $1.13 trillion by 2034. Home furnishings, lamps and lighting, ceramic accessories and decorative items all ride this same wave.
A market this large is also a market this noisy. The exporter who wins isn't the one who emails 5,000 generic "furniture importers" — it's the one who knows which 40 buyers actually book containers in their exact category, lane and price tier. That's a data problem, and it's solvable.
How ShipScout turns 11B+ shipment records into a buyer list
ShipScout indexes 11 billion-plus shipment records across 240+ countries — bill-of-lading and global trade data that names the companies actually moving furniture and home decor. Here's the workflow we'd run for a furniture or handicrafts exporter:
- Find importers by HS code. Filter US import data on HS 9401/9403 (seats and other furniture), 9405 (lamps and lighting), 5701/5702 (carpets and rugs) or 6913 (ceramic ornaments). You get the actual buyers receiving those goods — not a directory guess.
- Rank by volume. Sort the importer list by shipment count and container volume so you pitch the buyers with real, repeat demand first. Browse the full company database or drill straight into Vietnam-linked traders to map the China+1 supply web.
- Vet suppliers and partners. Sourcing rattan, components or finished goods yourself? The same records reveal which Vietnamese or regional factories actually ship at scale — and how consistently — so you skip the unvetted middleman.
- Track competitors. See which buyers your rivals supply, what volumes move each quarter, and when a major importer starts diversifying origins — your cue to step in with a quote.
It's the difference between guessing and knowing. The shipment record already tells you who buys outdoor furniture in volume, who's switching off Chinese supply, and who books carpets and rugs every quarter — you just need to read it. Compare lanes country-by-country starting with the US importer base, the destination driving both the furniture and handicraft stories above.
Find your next furniture & home decor buyers.
Search verified importers, exporters and suppliers across 240+ countries and 11B+ shipment records — ranked by volume, with the contacts to reach them.
Browse the Company Directory →The furniture trade map is being redrawn in real time — Vietnam at a record $17.2B and 45% of the US wooden-furniture market, China retreating under October's tariffs, India's craft lane anchored to the American buyer. For an SME exporter, that volatility is the opening. The buyers are findable. The volumes are visible. The only question is whether you reach them before your competitor does.