Before 1990, China’s cabinet manufacturing was in a poor state. Chinese traditional kitchen cabinets were mostly freelanced and handmade, with long production cycles with no mechanized equipment or large-scale manufacturing facilities like CNC machinery and computers that would speed up the production process. Sales were limited to within a short radius of the production site and units sold were low in comparison to today’s standards. Cabinet manufacturers at this stage are Mainly based on small regional enterprises.

After the 1990s, with the production of pre-installed cabinets in China becoming more popular, the cabinet industry has evolved from a largely regionalized market into a market that is large enough to support mass production and set up production bases in multiple regions. At the same time, with efficiency improvements in manufacturing and the development of transportation, China’s cabinet industry is seeing more large-scale production, but the individual design capabilities of cabinet makers are still relatively weak and the intelligence level is apparently low.

On the other hand, traditional cabinet retailing is inefficient and its distribution model/cost makes it difficult to build a solid sales channel. It generally takes about a year for a project to go from design, proofing, and dealer order to sales. Many of cabinet manufacturers are slow to respond to changes in consumer preferences, and their dealers have often been stuck stocking items with high inventory and cash hog status. At that time, the supply chain of the entire Chinese cabinet manufacturing industry was operating with low efficiency. All these factors led to the high cost of cabinet supply, which was eventually passed on to end consumers with an abnormally high markup rate. That in turn makes the industry highly opaque.

In terms of the export of Chinese cabinets, the quantity of exported kitchen cabinets had been reducing in those years, as OEM companies no longer have a competitive edge with regard to manufacturing. Additionally, these cabinet companies are also continuously having an impact on profit margins due to the value of their products. The industry as a whole has started to shift towards Southeast Asia.

Starting around the year 2000, customized kitchen cabinets began to become more popular in mainland China. Customized cabinets are made-to-order cabinets using modern information technology and flexible production technology, which allows them to be customized for any customer’s needs.

Compared with handmade kitchen cabinets, custom-made cabinets have more stability in terms of quality and are also more environment-friendly. And compared with pre-assembled cabinets, custom kitchen cabinets offer many benefits over pre-installed ones. They allow for greater space utilization, provide a unified style for the whole house, and are backed by advanced landing services. The emergence of custom cabinets caused a huge change for homeowners as well as furniture companies, which set off a trend for reform in the Chinese furniture industry.

Since then, kitchen cabinets have evolved into an important and strategic part of the Chinese furniture industry. China’s customized cabinet market is growing at a fast pace, with large companies taking advantage of greater productivity. At present, the growth rate of the customized kitchen cabinet industry is at around 15%-20% while the growth rate of the Chinese furniture industry is around 8%-10%.