Guides / Industry Analysis

Is Vietnam Actually Cheaper Than China for Furniture?

September 24, 2026

The question arrives in almost every first email: is Vietnam cheaper. The honest answer is that the country is the wrong unit of comparison. Construction is the right one, and once you compare that way the picture stops being confusing.

The comparison most buyers actually run, and why it misleads

A buyer sends the same drawing to a factory in Guangdong and a factory in Binh Duong, gets two numbers, and concludes something about two countries.

What they have usually measured is two different products. The Chinese quote often assumes a panel carcass with imported hardware. The Vietnamese quote often assumes solid or edge glued hardwood. Those are different objects that happen to look alike in a rendering, and the price difference between them is larger than the price difference between the two countries.

Name the construction per component before you compare anything. Solid, finger joint, edge glued panel, veneered panel and plywood are five prices. The construction guide covers how to specify it so the quotes become comparable.

Where Vietnam genuinely wins

Solid plantation hardwood. Acacia and rubberwood are grown, harvested and sawn inside the country. The wood does not cross a border before it becomes your product. China imports most of its hardwood, so on a solid wood piece Vietnam starts with a structural advantage rather than a policy one.

Labour intensive finishing. Hand sanding, oiling, distressing, colour sorting. These have resisted automation, and they are a large share of the cost on a wood product. This is the clearest remaining labour advantage and it happens to sit exactly where wood furniture spends its hours.

Outdoor furniture. The acacia supply, the kiln capacity and the finishing labour are all in the same place. There is no equivalent concentration elsewhere at this price point.

Tariff position into the US. For buyers selling into the United States this has been the loudest driver, often louder than cost. It is also the least stable of the four, which is the point of the next section.

Where the advantage has already gone

Panel furniture. If your product is a melamine or veneered panel carcass, a large share of the value is the board and the hardware. Vietnam imports a lot of both, frequently from China. You are paying freight into Vietnam, then labour, then freight out. On flat pack panel goods the Chinese quote often wins on merit.

Metal, glass and upholstery content. These get subcontracted in Vietnam rather than made in the same plant. Every subcontracted component adds a handoff, and handoffs cost lead time and defect risk. A chair that is 40 percent metal is not a Vietnamese product with a wood part, it is a metal product looking for the wrong country.

Very small runs. Setup, jigs and a sample round are paid once wherever you make it. Vietnamese export factories are configured for containers. Below their normal run the setup swamps the unit price, and a Chinese factory used to smaller batches will beat them.

Imported species. Oak, walnut and ash land in Vietnam at international prices plus freight. You are buying Vietnamese labour applied to expensive wood, which is a narrow advantage.

The thing nobody prices properly

Tariff arbitrage is not a manufacturing advantage. It is a policy position, and policy positions change.

The specific exposure is transshipment scrutiny. When a country becomes the obvious way around a tariff, customs authorities start asking whether the goods were substantially transformed there or merely repacked. For furniture the line is usually clear, because you cannot fake a kiln and a finishing line. But it is clear only if your factory is a real producer.

That makes producer verification a commercial risk control, not a quality nicety. A buyer who sourced from a repack operation because the quote was good has a tariff and customs problem, not a furniture problem. The factory vetting guide has the questions that separate a producer from a trader, and the regions guide covers where real production actually sits.

If your entire case for Vietnam is the tariff line, you have built a programme on something you do not control. If the case is plantation hardwood plus finishing labour, you have built it on something structural.

What the cost curve looks like from here

Wages in Binh Duong and Dong Nai have risen for years and industrial land is no longer cheap. The country is not going to win a race to the bottom, and the factories know it. What is happening instead is specialisation: more capable plants, more compliance capacity, more willingness to hold a retail programme to a spec.

Consequence for buyers: the cheapest quote from Vietnam is getting less interesting and the most capable one is getting more interesting. The margin pressure on factories is real, and it shows up as a quiet temptation to substitute a species, a panel supplier or a finish coat. That is a specification and inspection problem, covered in the inspection guide.

How to decide, in one pass

Split your range by construction, not by country.

Solid wood, hand finished, outdoor, components: quote Vietnam and expect to win there.

Panel carcass, hardware heavy, metal or upholstery dominant, very small runs: keep quoting China, and be honest with yourself about why you were considering the move.

Mixed range: split it. Most buyers who end up ahead on both cost and risk run two countries by product type rather than migrating wholesale. Nobody gets a medal for country loyalty, and the sourcing decision is per product anyway.

For the full picture of what Vietnam produces and how an order runs, start with the guide to wood products from Vietnam.

Frequently asked questions

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