The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of life for people around the world. In many countries, it caused lockdowns that shifted the way that many businesses operate.

International trade was affected in more ways than one, but the general outcome has been quite positive. Many industries have flourished, including the Home & Garden industry.

In this article, we’re going to discuss how the power of the internet and digital trade have propelled the Home & Garden industry through the pandemic. We will take a specific look at Home & Garden trade trends and challenges that have arisen due to the pandemic.

From there, we will focus on buying and selling on Alibaba.com. We’ll look closely at a few seller success stories before we discuss our upcoming Online Trade Show.

Table of contents

Home & Garden industry trends
Pandemic-related trade challenges
Buying and selling on Alibaba.com
Great suppliers on Alibaba.com
Alibaba.com Online Trade Show | Summer
Final thoughts

Home & Garden industry trends

ecommerce has become a major influence in many industries over the past few years, and the Home & Garden industry is no exception.

Here is a quick look at a few trends in international trade that are currently shaping the Home & Garden industry:

The global home furnishing market was valued at US $1 trillion in 2020
There are three main Home & Garden categories: cost-effective/budget-friendly, high-quality, and specialty items
The B2C ecommerce home furnishing industry is expected to be valued at US $101.65 billion by 2024¹
Demand for home office equipment and home furnishing increased as a result of the pandemic²
The global economy bounced back from COVID-related recessions faster than previous global recessions³
Merchandise trade broke records in Q1 of 2021⁴
Experts suspect that the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines will influence the continued recovery of the economy⁵

To summarize these points, international trade has certainly bounced back after a very brief recession that was sparked by the pandemic. There continues to be a higher demand for goods than services, but this is positive news for the Home & Garden industry.

Lifestyle Home & Garden trends

The Home & Garden industry is heavily influenced by trends and styles that revolve around lifestyle. Let’s take a peek at a few lifestyle-influenced trends in the Home & Garden industry:

The top styles of Home & Garden products include classical luxury, luxury quality, fashion avant-garde, minimalism, natural serenity, individualism, and smart home
The industry offers massive opportunities for creative home design and one-stop shops for home furnishing
Some key product categories include home storage, home decor, and coffee/tea supplies
Seasonal/holiday-specific items are hot
Fun at home, sweet home, and cozy home are three main aesthetics/atmospheres that are considered stylish
Gardening on a small scale in living spaces is on the rise

These lifestyle-focused trends are likely influenced by the increased amount of time at home over the past year. It will likely continue to change and evolve with time as circumstances change.

Pandemic-related trade challenges

The need to self-isolate throughout the pandemic made it nearly impossible to conduct business as usual. In-person meetings, operations, and events were shut down and many businesses were forced to move online fast.

However, the digital shifts to accommodate buyers and sellers when in-person interaction was impossible may be here to stay. The convenience and cost-effectiveness of buying and selling online are unbeatable.

With digital trade, geographic location becomes less important, and physical borders are knocked down. Suppliers and retailers can connect with partners around the world without having to spend time and resources on travel.

This benefits both parties. Sellers can reach exponentially larger audiences, and buyers are not limited to local suppliers.

Although the pandemic pushed towards digitalization and has revolutionized cross-border trade, there are a few notable challenges that are worth mentioning. These include cost, quality, and delivery.

Cost

The pandemic has caused shortages of raw materials, which in turn, has caused an increase in costs.⁶ This ties into disruptions in production and increased demand for certain goods.

An increase in the cost of raw materials leads to an increased cost of production. Manufacturers and wholesalers are forced to either significantly raise their prices or absorb some of the costs.

Some of the worst shortages were among products including paint, adhesives, resin, and polyurethane foams. Since these are used in many products and a lot of types of packaging, this has posed a cost issue in many industries.

Quality

The pandemic put most of the world into a state of emergency. Unfortunately, the emergency production of a lot of goods has created quality issues across the board.⁷

The reason that rapid emergency production causes quality challenges is that speed and quantity become the focus. As the demand for specific products rose, manufacturers did the best that they could to create the supply to meet that demand.

Delivery

Peculiar circumstances brought on by the pandemic led to a decrease in the supply of freight and an increase in demand.

Did you know that the majority of air cargo is shipped on passenger planes? Travel restrictions greatly decreased the number of available commercial flights, which caused an equal decrease in the supply of air cargo space.

Additionally, there was a spike in demand for shipping by boat due to an extended holiday shopping season in retail at the end of 2020. Businesses tried to space out the holiday rush to maintain social distancing in stores.

Although the goal of this extension was to space things out, the stores became busier than ever and needed to continuously stock their shelves. Ships, especially traveling from Asia to North America, could not make the trip fast enough to keep up with the need. Once again, the demand was higher than the supply.

These shifts have led to an increase in freight costs and some delivery delays.

Read more on pandemic-influenced freight trends in our dedicated post.

Buying and selling on Alibaba.com

Alibaba.com is a B2B ecommerce marketplace that connects buyers and sellers from around the world. Our platform primarily facilitates wholesale transactions, which makes it the go-to place for retailers and manufacturers that are looking to source products and materials in bulk.

Alibaba.com is among the top players in the B2B ecommerce space, and for good reason, too. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of conducting trade on our powerful platform.

Reliable platform

Alibaba.com is known around the world as a platform that is trustworthy and reliable. Any transaction that is carried out through the platform is backed by Alibaba.com. This means that buyers can rest assured that they get what they pay for, and sellers can remain confident that they will get paid for every order that they ship.

Alibaba.com offers two particular programs that are focused on the buyer’s experience: verified suppliers and trade assurance.

The verified suppliers program is pretty straightforward. Alibaba.com verifies the identity and legitimacy of suppliers to ensure that there is no scamming or crooked business.

Trade assurance, on the other hand, is Alibaba.com’s promise to get involved if there is anything wrong with an order. That means if an order is not delivered in the specified time frame or the items arrive and they are not the quality you paid for, Alibaba.com will go to bat to get you a refund.

Added support

Many ecommerce platforms are simply a digital spot to carry out transactions, but Alibaba.com is different in the sense that it provides added support for buyers and sellers.

This is especially true for sellers. Alibaba.com offers resources to help suppliers set up their online storefronts so that they can start selling in no time. The platform also provides support for demand schedules, advertisements, analytics, and other similar tools.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is the auto-translation functionality of the platform. While automatic storefront translation alone is an impressive value add, Alibaba.com takes it a step further.

The Alibaba.com customer chat portal automatically translates conversations. That means if a buyer writes a message to you in Italian and your language is set to English, the message will appear in your inbox in English. This truly helps to break down borders and facilitate international trade.

Alibaba.com also offers one-on-one support for users when the need arises.

Intelligent tools

Alibaba.com offers a wide spread of intelligent tools for B2B trade to facilitate sales on the platform These tools include:

Smart product posting
Dynamic pricing
Product showcases
Keyword advertising
Site-wide promotions
Industry analytics

Each of these features is designed to help trade partners streamline their sales and optimize their experience.

Easy payment

Alibaba.com supports over ten major global payment methods and supports more than 50 currencies worldwide.

Pay with your own currency using PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Ideal, Sofort, Molpay, JCB, Diners, and many more. You can also pay with your e-wallet directly using Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

Alibaba.com also accepts domestic wire transfers in the US, EU, UK, Australia, and Canada for large order payments.

Elite Partner Event: Access to trusted suppliers

To help buyers source efficiently and screen for quality, the “verified” logo will appear alongside professional suppliers that have been verified by independent third parties for industry-specific qualifications and services.

When searching for product details or through company profiles, buyers can see these suppliers’ strengths like corporate qualification, product qualification, and corporate capabilities.

To make it even easier, Alibaba.com recently launched an always-on Elite Partner Event where buyers can find high-quality products and suppliers in one place. This vetted group of global suppliers features innovative, new technologies and products in a variety of categories to help enhance your competitive edge.

Great suppliers on Alibaba.com

Professional buyers in the Home & Garden industry can find many excellent suppliers on the Alibaba international station platform, and achieve the success of buyers' procurement and business goals.

Let’s take a look at a couple of the great companies that sell on Alibaba.com.

Foshan Chenglin Furniture Co., Ltd.

Foshan Chenglin Furniture Co., Ltd. is the number one furniture supplier on Alibaba.com. This company has been in the business since 2014 and has been selling on Alibaba.com since 2019. It has offerings in all categories of home furnishing.

Alibaba.com has made it easy for this company to connect with buyers all around the world. Based in Guangdong, China, Foshan Chenglin Furniture Co., Ltd. primarily supplies retailers in Southeast Asia, North America, and Eastern Europe.

In just two years, this supplier has successfully completed nearly 180 transactions via Alibaba.com, with the majority of them falling in the 5-figure range.

What makes this company so successful is how they leverage market analytics. Their team has mastered the ability to chart demands and quickly manufacture products that the market wants.

Also, thanks to Alibaba.com, Foshan Chenglin Furniture Co., Ltd. has an impressive response rate of under 40 hours. Their sales team has connected with 28 customers through our Request for Quotation (RFQ) portal in the past 30 days.

Foshan Chenglin Furniture Co., Ltd. has more than 1000 patents with FSC environmental protection certificate and over 400 exhibition halls covering more than 20 countries and regions. Additionally, this company is a verified supplier on Alibaba.com and boasts a 5-star rating.

Some of the top products from this supplier include sofas, chairs, and tables.

Hangzhou Rena Pet Products Co., Ltd

Hangzhou Rena Pet Products Co., Ltd, which is also known as “Rena Pet,” is one of the top pet product suppliers on Alibaba.com. This is a verified supplier that boasts a 4.9-star rating on Alibaba.com.

This supplier is based in Zhejiang, China, and it primarily serves retailers in North America, Eastern Europe, Oceana, and Eastern Asia. Rena Pet has been selling on Alibaba.com since 2009, and in that time, the company has successfully completed over 1300 transactions.

With the support of Alibaba.com’s client communication feature, Rena Pet has gotten their response time down to an average of lower than 5 hours. This supplier has also tapped into the Request for Quotation portal to give 50 quotes to inquiring buyers in the past 30 days.

This company has three distinct core advantages. These include the use of photocatalytic materials for safe pet supplies, the use of scratching materials that are natural and compostable, and the ability to produce cute pet toys that are attractive to pet owners.

The top products from this seller include slow dog feeders, pet beds, portable dog water bottles, non-slip stainless steel dog bowls, and feeder toys.

Alibaba.com Online Trade Show | Summer

Online Trade Shows have become very important over the past year. These virtual events have helped buyers and sellers to continue to connect when meeting in person was not a possibility.

On June 14th, Alibaba.com is hosting a mega Online Trade Show to help suppliers and buyers from around the world to connect and form partnerships. Alibaba.com Online Trade Show | Summer is curated with buyers in mind to help them find the products they need at the rates that they want.

Sellers must have at least a three-star rating to attend. That means only premium sellers with high-quality product offerings will be at this virtual event. As a buyer, this is great news since you don’t have to question the reliability of any seller or the quality of any product.

Attendees who qualify for “Pro Buyer” status on Alibaba.com will have access to special perks, including R&D, tailor-made designs, customer service, order fulfillment, and special rates.

Pro buyers also have access to VIP Pavilion where they can meet and negotiate directly with high-level managers from over 1,000 suppliers. The suppliers must have at least a four-star rating to be a part of the VIP Pavilion.

In addition to the standard trade show activities, buyers will have access to “thought-leadership" speeches from the Head of Alibaba.com B2B, North America, CEO of Ufi, High Management of Wayfair in the Home & Garden category, and more. There will also be a series of speeches and presentations from successful buyers and sellers on Alibaba.com.

Buyers can also gain access to in-depth industrial reports that are curated to reflect the latest data and trends from Alibaba.com.

Online Trade Show | Summer details

Who: Professional buyers and premium suppliers

What: Online Trade Show to help buyers find high-quality products from premium suppliers

When: June 14, 2021, time TBD

Where: Entirely online

Final thoughts

There are many opportunities for buying and selling on Alibaba.com, especially in the Home & Garden industry. Our platform is equipped with all of the tools that buyers need to successfully source products for businesses.

One great way to connect with premium suppliers is through the Alibaba.com Online Trade Show | Summer. You can streamline your buying process by connecting with reliable suppliers who offer high-quality products right off the bat.

Are you interested in attending our trade show? Sign up today to reserve your spot and to receive updates and reminders about the event. We’d love to see you there!

References

1 - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/-101-65-growth-expected-in-home-and-garden-products-b2c-e-commerce-market--key-drivers-trends-major-vendors-and-market-forecast-through-2024--technavio-301264605.html

2 - https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/ditcinf2021d2_en.pdf

3 - https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/ditcinf2021d2_en.pdf

4 - https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/international-trade-statistics-trends-in-first-quarter-2021.htm

5 - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/global-trade-statistics-covid-19-wto/

6 - https://constructionmarketexperts.com/en/news/pandemic-causes-shortage-of-raw-materials-price-rises-on-construction-chemicals-market/

7 - https://www.qualitymag.com/articles/96184-covid-19s-impact-on-quality-3-lessons-learned-and-where-we-go-from-here