Should Airbnb enter the furniture retail market?

What is the purpose? => Increase revenue

US market or International Market? => US first and then go globally

Market size is big because nowadays I focus more on the decoration of their house and the significant development of hospitality industry

Market growth is high because the number of population has increased continuously 

Market trends: 

• Life becomes better and better

• People think more about the increactional activity

• People tend to spend more time and money on travel

• The development of the hospitality industry

• The needs of furniture will increase year by year. 

Number of competitors: Red ocean either online or offline (IKEA, Walmart, ...)

Competitors’ resource:

• Huge and stable financial resource (stable cash flow, big investment, …)

• Have many experts in sales and furniture

• Great ecosystem (sale distribution, logistics, …)

• Software company (Sharing platform)

• Hospitality industry

• Connect house owner with renters

• Prefer short-term stayings

• Million of “houses” around the world

• Information resource

We could use the relationship with “house owners” as our Unique Selling Point, but I don’t think it would be appropriate and benefit for us in the long run.

 Our core value is platform sharing - software. So it is very hard for Airbnb to develop the physical sale distribution like brick and mortar stores.

If Airbnb chooses to build a platform, it already has a giant e-commerce, Amazon. In addition, people tend to not buy furniture online because they believe it would be better to “see” and experience the real furniture before buying.

The investment would be much more than the benefit, wait for a long time to get the profit

Although the market is very potential, Airbnb would not be beneficial enough to enter this market.