An evaluation on growth potential of the small and medium scale enterprises (SME) in Turkish furniture industry

Abstract

With its increasingly expanding uses, the furniture industry has become a basic industrial sector in the world, especially in the developed countries, and it represents 2% of the total labour and 2% to 4% of the total production. The global foreign trade of furniture was around $174 billion in 2008. Though it has been growing fast, the furniture industry in Turkey is far from the level in the developed countries. In regard to the Turkish furniture industry, 99% of which consists of small and medium scale enterprises, just like all the other industries, few data are needed to be able to make accurate evaluations. The current conditions in the small and medium scale enterprises have been neatly described in this study. It tries to offer solutions to the problems, analyze the competition opportunities and shed light for future studies by eliminating inadequate data. It is the first study in the field since there has not been such research which covers the whole country except for the regional ones. Also, this project is supplementary to the studies carried out by the researchers on the large-scale enterprises, the whole industry is analyzed. Key words: Furniture, furniture industry, small and medium scale furniture enterprises.