Indonesian furniture market in Japan

I am currently own a small reasonably successful furniture production company in Indonesia. My wife whom is Japanese and I are considering moving to Tokyo where she is from and trying to set up a business marketing our production there. The rental prices for shop space are pretty scary though. But life for our little one year old girl is much more appealing in Japan compared to being raised in Indonesia. Any comments about how the market in Tokyo is for furniture?

http://www.furniture-info.com/163.htm
http://www.japanshoji.com/
http://www.japan-shop.com/store/1013.html
semoga bermanfaat

Daniel,

I have at least 5 furnitures in my home that were made in Indonesia. One I bought through a typical Japanese mail order company, but the others were bought within 3 years at shops which import furnitures and ornaments directly from Indonesia. 3 of the furnitures are custom made.

I ended up buying these furnitures after I looked at various shops of various kinds and noticed that Indonesian furniture gives better quality for the reasonable price. By better quality, I mean that they don't look "crappy" since they are made of real solid wood and uses organic colors. Also they are very stiff and can hold heavy items.

If I were to buy other types of furniture like Japanese, western, country or antique, I would have to pay at least double the price, otherwise I would end up buying very plastic stuff.

The down side is that Indonesian furniture is often not as elaborate as other furniture. Real wood is delicate and naturally bends due to climate and age (although that is the fun of it).

This price range and quality is very fit for people like us in the 40s and 50s and those who are not too picky but would rather have something organic than something too corny in the house.

However, I'm not sure if our type of people share a large population among furniture consumers. Yet I do see a great deal of Indonesian furniture shops in Japan. But then I only know of one shop that accepts custom requests of any kind.

Another down side is that it takes more then 3 months until we can recieve the custom made items from this particular shop, and they keep extending this due date. There are also unexpected mistakes like a shelf being slightly lower than we requested. So I only recommend their furniture to people who are okay with these down sides that would hardly happen in ordinarly furniture shops in Japan.

Meguro Dori in Tokyo is so-called "kaguya-gai (furniture avenue)". You can spot several Indonesian furniture shops there. Indonesian furniture shops are also easy to find over the internet. You may want to ask them for advise.