Everything you need to know to sell furniture online

The idea of selling furniture online is often met with a question; will customers in India buy these bulky home-furnishing products online? To answer that, let us go over a few facts.

India’s furniture market is the fifth largest in the world, making India one of the largest exporters of wooden furniture globally. However, out of its total furniture market, about 85 – 90 % is unorganized. This $17 billion unorganized market has slowly started to move online, making the rest of the branded furniture owners feel the need to set up their businesses on online marketplaces like Amazon. Today, with the abundant availability of furniture on online marketplaces and free shipping options, customers across the country have quickly adapted to the idea of shopping home furnishings and getting their new furniture whilst they are cozily sipping a cup of tea at home.

Now that you know crores of customers are waiting to buy furniture online, how about you set up your furniture business too.
Setting up a furniture business on Amazon is very simple. All you need are the below mentioned four things to register and sign up:

>Contact Details – Name, Phone Number, Email Address & Postal Address
>GST number/ID – Visit the AtoZ GST guide to learn how to acquire one.
>PAN (Permanent account number) number for business
?Bank Account Details to receive your payment

To sell in the furniture category on Amazon, the seller must also meet the following requirements:
>Should have the facility and be willing to ship the products by himself, directly to the customers.
>Should provide installation and furniture set up services upon delivery.
>Should be willing to arrange for return pick up in case the customer wants to return the damaged furniture.

Once you have registered and meet the above-mentioned requirements, you can follow the steps below:
Step1: Decide the region in which you are willing to ship. Amazon restricts furniture sellers to only sell furniture within a specific region. SBR or Ship By Region, allows sellers to choose the region within which they will be able to ship comfortable without any hassle.
Step2: Download the NIS template and enter all the data of your entire selection according to the style guide in the template.
Step3: Once your template in ready, get in touch with the Seller Support Team or request a call back to help create your ASINs. (This process simply explained means, creating catalogue for your products and adding them to your online store.)
Step4: Once your SBR (Ship By Region) is done and products are added or listed, you should visit your Shipping Settings page and uncheck the regions you does not want to ship to and you can set the prices and the delivery time as well.
Step5: Within settings, you should also fill About Seller, Shipping and Privacy policy in Your Info & Policies under settings.
Step6: Once all the above steps are complete, you can launch your online store.

At any point if you need assistance with a particular step or want to reach to third party services that can help ship your products, you can get in touch with the Amazon Seller Support team. To learn about all the other categories that you can sell on, please register yourself and visit the specific category page.

Source:
ForbesIndia: Online furniture retailing finally comes home
Techstory: Online Furniture Market in India – Challenges And The Way Forward !
Indian Online Seller: 5 Furniture etailers making a mark in the Indian Market