Not far off from how much you pay for any tough sofa that has even a hope of surviving... ah, large friends or relatives. The steel frames on these make them seem like they'd possibly last for a useful amount of time under those circumstances.
Cheap furniture goes to hell fast if anyone over ~250lb is sitting on it regularly. Or sometimes for no discernible reason at all. Our experience has been that unless you're buying furniture that puts its high durability right there in the marketing, you may as well buy Ikea, which despite its reputation for being fragile will last at least as long as other cheap (but still more expensive, and often less tasteful) furniture.
We bought a couch that seemed pretty good and wasn't cheap. It was really comfortable for about a week, then the whole structure just started to sag.
The kids like to stand on the arm rests and jump off. We very quickly learned that the entire structure of each arm rest was just a cardboard box, and they both promptly crushed, and now we have deformed, squishy arm rests.
Yeah, when I went looking for advice on couches and chairs that'll hold up to serious (ab)use, everyone in the know recommended a couple of modern heavy-duty manufacturers or finding something from the mid 80s or earlier and refurbing, both due to survivorship bias and because even cheap furniture from that time was very "overbuilt" (or just "built" if you have normal standards and aren't a cost-shaving manufacturer) compared to modern stuff and legitimately is much stronger. There aren't really other options AFAIK, and we have both some heavy friends and three young kids so better to spend low 4-figures on a couch once than high-3-figures and have to replace it every year or two.
If those steel frame Campaign Living couches actually hold up, they're a good deal at ~$1200. That ugly-ass bulky $800 Ashley Furniture couch with all the faux engraved wood and crap from the furniture store stands a real chance of breaking in short order under very ordinary and careful use, let alone anything extreme. They're garbage. One of several cases in which I think our standard of living gains the last couple decades are kind of fake, disguising lots of things actually getting much crappier as they get less expensive. Though some others, to be sure, have improved—cars, notably, and computers for the most part.
I think AR will find a useful niche here, IKEA already has an ARKit app and I think it will become standard for any large furniture or home improvement store. One problem with AR is that is won't solve the comfort problem. You don't need to get a "feel" for a bookshelf or a cabinet, but couches, beds and chairs vary a lot in terms of comfort level and you can't really know if something will be comfortable unless you sit or lay on it.
While they look nice and might be decent quality, they delayed my shipment repeatedly up to about 6 months before I cancelled my order. Paid in full many months out so it was essentially an interest free loan. I would not recommend them, no matter how awesome the UX of their site is.
I have mixed feelings about Wayfair. My hunch is that Amazon is eyeing the market and will aggressively target it once it becomes a focus. That would be interesting to see: Amazon's supply chain management is perhaps one of the best (maybe Walmart is about the same) and I don't think Wayfair would be able to compete.
Now, my personal experience with Wayfair has been mixed. They don't manufacture anything themselves, so its usually a hit or miss. I LOVE the bedframe I bought from them, which turned out to be actually manufactured by a Korean company called Zinus. However, a nice headboard that I purchased was of poor quality (it looks nice at first, but the wood is soft... dents easily. The workmanship is not very good, and this is clear even to an untrained eye like mine).
Showrooming any significant amount of furniture takes a lot of room. At that point you might as well have a separate store in the right location which may or may not be the same setting as the high-end grocery store. And, at that point, you've just reinvented the furniture store.
I bought a couple of rugs from wayfair, mainly because it was a convenient way to buy rugs, as in: I didn't really want to go shopping for a long time to find a rug that met my needs (dimension, colors, price).
I'm currently in the market for a sofa, but this is more of a hobby than anything else - my wife and I don't have the same taste in sofa design, it turns out, so the overlap between what each like is small to start with. Factor in the need to be a nap-comfortable sofa and there's a lot of limitations there. A good sofa should last 20+ years, so I'm willing to take the time to find the right one.
What was your experience buying rugs from them? I'm in the same boat as you in terms of wanting a rug but not wanting to spend time physically going around.
It was pretty positive. I bought two area rugs from them, both are holding up well. According to my order history, they're now 2.8 years old, so I'd say I'm pleased. Not super-cheap ($375 for the two of them), but free shipping. Neither seem to be available anymore, which isn't super-surprising given stock turnover and so on.
Also check out rugsusa.com -- I ordered two large area rugs from them a couple years ago and have been quite happy. They have an insanely huge selection.
I think rugs are easy to order online relative to other furniture-type stuff, because the general shape is obvious: you don't have to see it in person to know it's going to be shaped like a rug.
I bought a bed from Wayfair. It was inexpensive and is fine. Except FedEx made me help carry it up to my apartment, because it was too heavy for the driver. I'm a large healthy male, but I can't imagine my mother doing that.
Yeah, they really shouldn't deliver anything their driver can't get at least to the door. I doubt if their insurance policy covers injuries that might happen to a customer helping move a package from the truck to the dwelling.
The article compares how difficult is it to ship sofas with shipping mattresses. However you can order online rolled and compressed mattresses for ~60€ that are the size of a thick pillow. Once the plastic wrap is removed it will unroll. Then wait 24h and it will grow to its full size.
Non spring, memory foam mattresses compress surprisingly well. Bigger than a pillow. Still weighs the same regardless of dimensions though.
Anecdotally, I had a fantastic experience ordering one through Argos (UK brick and mortar catalogue store that is finally getting its act together online), same day delivery on a Sunday, fit the bill of "I need a cheap mattress tonight".
If I didn't need it same day, then there is no way I'd buy something as subjective as a mattress online..
There was an article the other day here in multiple German newspapers that IKEA will start selling through shops like Amazon and Alibaba besides their own ecommerce presence. If I remember correctly they mentioned that IKEA has twice the margin compared to all other competitors. They also mentioned that the biggest problem in the delivery process seems to be damage to these bulky items.
Every time I've ordered from IKEA the items have been damaged. Fortunately it has been minimal and they are so cheap it doesn't really matter.
This is an example of where you want an item to be shipped a single time. Amazon has a problem where big items can end up looking like they've been shipped two or three times, which of course increases the chances of damage.
I've been burned by online furniture too many times. There's just no way to get a sense of something's quality online. You need to be able to touch it.
Price is not an indicator. My grandfather bought a couch and coffee table from Ethan Allen in the 1960s. They seemed to have been carved from a single block of wood and weighed a ton. Now everything they sell feels like it is made of cardboard, but it costs thousands and thousands of dollars.
Depends. The most popular engineered wood for furniture is MDF, which from the name ("medium density") you can imagine is not too dense and not too light.
The solid wood choices I thought were really beautiful for furniture (for the aesthetics and tactile qualities) are teak, oak, mahogany, and american walnut, all of which are rather dense (e.g. Asian teak is extremely heavy, while walnut is just as dense as MDF).
If something is really standardized and, especially if you can try it out beforehand like an office chair, it can make sense if you find a particularly good deal online. Got an Aeron that way and still going strong after 15 years with a free warranty repair at about 7 years.
But yeah, in general, furniture like sofas really needs to be experienced, it's almost impossible to return, and you'll hopefully have it for a long time. Of course, even experiencing something in person is no guarantee and, as you say, a lot of furniture these days is basically crap.
We recently moved and my wife attempted to purchase 5 different items from Wayfair: we ended up returning 4 of them.
The problem was color: the photography online was typically very different from the final product. We kept thinking there was a simple fix: send sample veneers to a customer to let them see what the actual product looks like. They could rent them out like lots of other furniture places do with fabric. I'd easily drop $100 on rent if I didn't have to deal with returning something.
We also had one coffee table that was half-stained: they literally forgot to stain half the table.
My wife purchased some pendant lights for our kitchen, and what arrived was a totally different color. Return was handled no problem.
Second time ordering lights, they were missing a part. After trying unsuccessfully of having the manufacturer ship us the missing part the order was cancelled. Again the return was handled no problem.
Third order the product was satisfactory.
Gotta hand it to their support though, returns were handled no questions asked and seamless. Makes putting up with the hassle almost worth it.
At least their customer support are good about it. My wife ordered a few pieces of furniture, and every one that arrived had some kind of physical defect. We called, they shipped another one, we called, they shipped another one, etc. All had poor quality, but at some point, we were able to assemble a good item by picking and choosing the best parts from each defective unit. We donated the scratched ones to charity.
If you're looking for a $249 couch, it's the way to go.
Around here, at least the low-end furniture stores like Art Van stock a ton of low-end Chinese-built furniture. Everything is particleboard and laminate, it scratches and peels and is basically junk, but they want to charge full price for it. At least when you buy a cheap table from Amazon it's priced accordingly.
I can see their industry turning upside very quickly. Furniture store are huge, they have tons of sales people making handsome commissions, they rely on selling furniture marked off by 40% with a different 'sale' each week, and make most of their money on the financing arm and fabric protection packages and wood polish extras.
Not just brick and mortars, recently I was looking at a couch on OverStock.com at ~ $1,100 , they have good prices right? I shopped around, found the same couch from a local company online (LA area) for $399 shipped. Transaction went smoothly quality was good.
> on OverStock.com at ~ $1,100 , they have good prices right? I shopped around, found the same couch from a local company online (LA area) for $399 shipped
Overstock.com, like Amazon.com (and Walmart.com), is mainly a marketplace these days, with the overwhelming majority of products sold by 3rd party vendors. You will see a wide range of products, and pricing, as you noticed here.
Always shop around. Don't assume that just because its on Amazon|Overstock|Walmart|whatever, that it must be a good deal.
And let's not forget, a lot of people are, for many different reasons. Maybe they're not expecting to stay in the house forever, maybe it's a group of housemates who are buying 'disposable' furniture to avoid dealing with ownership issues, maybe they're low-income.
I really think a lot of this has to do with people's lives and careers being less predictable than they were a few decades ago.
We spent way more than that on a "real" couch from a "real" furniture store and it's a total piece of shit. Was comfortable for a couple of months, and then completely fell apart. I just assume it's all cheap crap any more.
We're back to taking antiques from family members and just reupholstering. The only newer furniture we have that doesn't suck came from Pottery Barn about 10 years ago and has tags from North Carolina.
I would LOVE to buy furniture online, but the kickers are that quality is so hit or miss (usually miss), and there are expensive penalties in the form of return shipping fees. So I usually avoid it because I'm not ok paying $50-$100+ just to find out the photography was misleading so the colors are all wrong, and the built quality is exceptionally cheap.
I don't mind buying online as long as there are free in-store returns, but that tends to limit me to things like Target, Bed Bath, and a couple others. Some, like West Elm are really sneaky here. A lot of their items are just in a warehouse and are "web only." If it isn't a local warehouse, they don't do free in-store returns, so you again get hit with the ridiculous fee.
I hope to god Amazon does something with free in-store returns with all the Whole Foods real estate they purchased. If you could drop something off (and not worry about packaging it up for return shipping with FedEx), have them handle the return and be done with it, that would save me a lot of headaches AND make me spend a lot more for large online furniture purchases.
In the meantime, I've started experimenting with Modsy, which is great because they have 3d renderings of all the products from various stores, so at least I know the dimensions will be right, and the color should hopefully be a bit more on point. It also lets me visualize it in my space with lots of other stuff which is half the problem. Seriously, the renderings have to be seen to be believed.
Who are these people buying sofas, mattresses, pillows etc online? Bedframes, end tables, storage? Sure. Amazon knows what's up and realizes it has to have some form of brick-and-mortar to sell goods that [normal] humans will never be comfortable buying sight unseen.
The two are very different. With a book, you have a reasonably known quantity and it's much easier to ship it back. I'm half convinced people keep IKEA furniture because they can't figure out how to get it back in the box.
You don't necessarily need to disassemble and return it in the box. I bought and returned two bedside tables (HEMNES) recently. I only constructed the first and was unhappy with how it looked once it was in my room. They accepted the returns no questions asked.
Has that changed? I know several who have complained about needing to return it in its original packaging. At least I'm pretty sure it was IKEA that they conplained about - and there have been several.
I'll defer to you, as I haven't actually even been in one, personally.
I bought from one of those mattress in a box companies. They had free return with pickup so I figured it was pretty low risk and I was very happy with the result. Best mattress I've owned.
There's no point looking at a mattress in person; poking and lying down on it doesn't tell you what it's like to sleep on, so you have to go on reviews anyway.
A divan is just a box for the mattress to go on. I wanted some particular mechanical properties, which i could check by sending emails. Staff in a shop wouldn't have had a clue.
I bought a mattress online. I read somewhere that people who buy mattress that they have tried out in store aren't more satisfied than people who buy one online sight unseen - lying on it in the store doesn't really tell you what it's going to be like sleeping on it long term. So I just went for it because the price was right. Turns out I'm happy with my the mattress.
Pillows are pretty much all the same to me and are replaced regularly so I'll buy those online if there's a sale.
Since you ask: I bought a sofa (from Joybird) and mattress (from Leesa) online recently. Both came with free delivery and a 365-day return period. Happy with both of them.
Quality is really hard to judge. I bought a $500 desk on Wayfair last month, and was unhappy with the quality: cheap-o joining and cheap-looking laminate. It was chipped and broken when we got it, and because it would be too expensive (and worthless) to ship back, they just refunded our money and told us to donate it. I found a veneer desk locally for 50% of the price that I'm much happier with.
I bought one online from Costco.com. After I ordered, they sent me a fabric sample and made me sign a sheet that had things like "I have checked the fabric sample and the color and texture are to my liking", and "I understand that this couch is firmer than most".
When it arrived they put it together and everything was fine. Then a month later a seam popped. I called them and they said, "We can send someone to fix it, no charge, or give you $230, your choice". I assume $230 was the cost of repair.
I think there's room for more companies like Home Reserve (https://homereserve.com) which ships you a couch or chair in a few boxes you can carry up to a fourth-floor walkup and assemble yourself. If you get tired of the fabric you chose, or it gets damaged, you can order replacements. The covers zip off and zip on. Beyond the testimonials on their site (which all seem to be glowing, unsurprisingly) I have no idea of their quality. But when I was younger I'd have been happy with something convenient that was a step up from Ikea.
I've been using one of their products for a few months now. It was easy enough to assemble, and is reasonably comfortable for the price.
It's nice to be able to cheaply and easily design the layout which works for my house.
I'm pretty rough on things, and one of the strand board back pieces has broken twice. They've mailed me replacements pretty quickly, but I do wish it were a stronger material.
I've been very happy with dutchcrafters (www.dutchcrafters.com) who build the furniture from solid wood with a choice of finishes. The couple of things I got from them certainly cost more than Overstock or Wayfair but the quality has been incredible. The pieces built from maple in particular are built like tanks.
Furniture has a huge warehousing problem. Buying furniture without seeing it is the pits.
That means successful furniture stores have become massive, so you can see the goods and buy immediately. In the midwest, Berkshire's Nebraska Furniture Mart and Ikea are are difficult to beat for staple furniture.
But once you see it at Nebraska Furniture Mart (or something from the same manufacturer) you get an awfully sweet deal on it online. That's the near-term play. The long-term play of getting people to buy sight unseen will be far more difficult; Wayfair has traditionally tried price and ease of shipping/returns, but that only goes so far.
Wayfair (and their various demographically-targeted brands, which include Joss and Main, All Modern, Birch Lane and Dwell Studio) is such a horrible mix of crap and quality. I believe they really have to overcome this to become successful.
One confusing and annoying problem with retailers like Wayfair, and the many other outlets (Overstock, Barcelona Designs and many others), is that most of their inventory is white-labeled; they buy no-brand products from Asia (China being the main one) which they sell under fictional brand names such as "Ivy Bronx", "Langley Street", "Wade Logan" and so on. You'll find the exact same products elsewhere under other fictional brand names. Often I've been able to find a product, such as a lamp, that's maybe $100 on Wayfair, being sold for $200 in a different online store; exact same product, made in the same Chinese factory, but differently branded.
The shadiness undermines the integrity of the brand, but it means it's also impossible to predict the quality of what you order. "Langley Street" is just a style, and isn't necessarily all from the same manufacturer. This confusion is compounded by the fact that Wayfair also mixes "authentic" products such as Flos and Artemide into their inventory.
But also, a lot of these products are just complete junk. So much is laminate, cardboard and fiberboard. There's surprisingly good, solid-wood furniture made in places like India and Thailand, but usually the online descriptions doesn't give you the full materials list. A lot of times you can get quality hardwood, but the joinery is terrible (lots of patching, glue, etc.).
Isn’t that model the same in normal furniture shops? When I visited the bigger ones (XXXL Lutz chain in Germany) they always had lots of furniture under their in-house brands, which I guess is relabeled other stuff. More funky then the names is the pricing, because it’s always reduced. You will never see anything for full price, it will always be labeled with something like 30-50% off. Which however just reflects real market value. that’s actually the thing I like most about Ikea. Pricing and product range are stable.
I'm not familiar with XXXL Lutz, but it sounds like it's a bit like Wayfair, Overstock, Target, etc.? Home24.de is another white-labeling brand in Germany. Much of Home24's stuff can also be found on Wayfair and elsewhere.
Most retail furniture stores in the US (Blu Dot, Room and Board, West Elm, Herman Miller, Vitra, Knoll, Steelcase, etc.) either design their own furniture in-house or have name-brand designers (e.g. Eames, Jasper Morrison, etc.) they collaborate with. (Sometimes the manufacturer also produces their own "generic" white-labeled versions; for example, the factory that makes Knoll sofas apparently also makes identical/near-identical no-name sofas that are sold under different brand names at much, much lower prices, and if you have some inside information you can find out where to get these.)
Then there are high-end retailers like DWR, YLiving, Lumens, etc. that are more like Amazon in that they mostly don't rely on white-labeling.
But with the physical store you can walk into the showroom and get a feel for whether a couch is a cheap because it’s a piece of garbage or if it’s a good deal on a piece of solid furniture.
Not with 100 percent certainly, but a lot better than some staged photos on a website.
My experience with Hoeffner, XXXL, Moebel Kraft et al tells me that either you go for a premium price point or you will inevitably buy crap. But then, I think Ikea has more experience in producing cheap crap so that you get a better deal with Ikea furniture instead of the cheap stuff from XXXL.
Wayfair is just a drop-shipper as far as I can tell. They're just middlemen posting pictures and reviews up like everyone else trying to sell cheap crap at a 'discount'.
I purchased a $350 dresser from Overstock a few weeks ago. It arrived with ~10 pieces in ruins or had large visual defects. After giving Overstock a call, they sent out a box of replacement parts; however, they sent it to the wrong address. After another call, we finally got the parts. Of course, one of the replacement parts is also defective...
Same experience with Overstock when I bought a table. Three months and several frustrations later, I got the table and they offered me a 10% discount on my next furniture order. Needless to say, I'll never shop there again.
However, when my wife bought a chair on Wayfair, we didn't have any issues. I'd definitely do it again. It all depends on who you buy from.
Writing this as my wife and I are on the way to Ikea for the second time this week to choose a couch ...
You really need to see the couch in person before buying it. It’s really hard to judge quality otherwise. You need to feel the fabric of the sofa, sit and lay down on it to feel the cushions, and see the color in person. Our first trip to Ikea was meticulously researched, but when we saw the options we had chosen online in person we completely changed our minds.
We did find a couch we loved on Wayfair but there were few photos and the description of the item was incorrect. The item was a chaise sectional listed as reversible (the chaise could be switched between the left and right sides) but the item listed two separate prices for left vs. right. When I messaged Wayfair about the issue through their ‘Questions’ option on the item they responded quickly only to say that the item description was incorrect and it was not reversible. However, the item’s description currently remains incorrect and my question was not made public like the others. This, combined with the fact that no official dimensions are included in the item description makes me think Wayfair is a dressed up Alibaba for furniture, and not a serious online option like Article, which at least has a lot of good quality photos per item.
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[ 8.6 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI find the Campaign Living concept: https://www.campaignliving.com/products/the-sofa?variant=416... to be an interesting one, however.
EDIT: I'm a fool, and sofas aren't beds.
Cheap furniture goes to hell fast if anyone over ~250lb is sitting on it regularly. Or sometimes for no discernible reason at all. Our experience has been that unless you're buying furniture that puts its high durability right there in the marketing, you may as well buy Ikea, which despite its reputation for being fragile will last at least as long as other cheap (but still more expensive, and often less tasteful) furniture.
The kids like to stand on the arm rests and jump off. We very quickly learned that the entire structure of each arm rest was just a cardboard box, and they both promptly crushed, and now we have deformed, squishy arm rests.
If those steel frame Campaign Living couches actually hold up, they're a good deal at ~$1200. That ugly-ass bulky $800 Ashley Furniture couch with all the faux engraved wood and crap from the furniture store stands a real chance of breaking in short order under very ordinary and careful use, let alone anything extreme. They're garbage. One of several cases in which I think our standard of living gains the last couple decades are kind of fake, disguising lots of things actually getting much crappier as they get less expensive. Though some others, to be sure, have improved—cars, notably, and computers for the most part.
Now, my personal experience with Wayfair has been mixed. They don't manufacture anything themselves, so its usually a hit or miss. I LOVE the bedframe I bought from them, which turned out to be actually manufactured by a Korean company called Zinus. However, a nice headboard that I purchased was of poor quality (it looks nice at first, but the wood is soft... dents easily. The workmanship is not very good, and this is clear even to an untrained eye like mine).
I'm currently in the market for a sofa, but this is more of a hobby than anything else - my wife and I don't have the same taste in sofa design, it turns out, so the overlap between what each like is small to start with. Factor in the need to be a nap-comfortable sofa and there's a lot of limitations there. A good sofa should last 20+ years, so I'm willing to take the time to find the right one.
I think rugs are easy to order online relative to other furniture-type stuff, because the general shape is obvious: you don't have to see it in person to know it's going to be shaped like a rug.
Anecdotally, I had a fantastic experience ordering one through Argos (UK brick and mortar catalogue store that is finally getting its act together online), same day delivery on a Sunday, fit the bill of "I need a cheap mattress tonight".
If I didn't need it same day, then there is no way I'd buy something as subjective as a mattress online..
[1]http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/handel-konsumgueter/... (can't find the exact print-article I read...)
edit: grammar
This is an example of where you want an item to be shipped a single time. Amazon has a problem where big items can end up looking like they've been shipped two or three times, which of course increases the chances of damage.
Price is not an indicator. My grandfather bought a couch and coffee table from Ethan Allen in the 1960s. They seemed to have been carved from a single block of wood and weighed a ton. Now everything they sell feels like it is made of cardboard, but it costs thousands and thousands of dollars.
The solid wood choices I thought were really beautiful for furniture (for the aesthetics and tactile qualities) are teak, oak, mahogany, and american walnut, all of which are rather dense (e.g. Asian teak is extremely heavy, while walnut is just as dense as MDF).
But yeah, in general, furniture like sofas really needs to be experienced, it's almost impossible to return, and you'll hopefully have it for a long time. Of course, even experiencing something in person is no guarantee and, as you say, a lot of furniture these days is basically crap.
The problem was color: the photography online was typically very different from the final product. We kept thinking there was a simple fix: send sample veneers to a customer to let them see what the actual product looks like. They could rent them out like lots of other furniture places do with fabric. I'd easily drop $100 on rent if I didn't have to deal with returning something.
We also had one coffee table that was half-stained: they literally forgot to stain half the table.
Second time ordering lights, they were missing a part. After trying unsuccessfully of having the manufacturer ship us the missing part the order was cancelled. Again the return was handled no problem.
Third order the product was satisfactory.
Gotta hand it to their support though, returns were handled no questions asked and seamless. Makes putting up with the hassle almost worth it.
Around here, at least the low-end furniture stores like Art Van stock a ton of low-end Chinese-built furniture. Everything is particleboard and laminate, it scratches and peels and is basically junk, but they want to charge full price for it. At least when you buy a cheap table from Amazon it's priced accordingly.
I can see their industry turning upside very quickly. Furniture store are huge, they have tons of sales people making handsome commissions, they rely on selling furniture marked off by 40% with a different 'sale' each week, and make most of their money on the financing arm and fabric protection packages and wood polish extras.
Overstock.com, like Amazon.com (and Walmart.com), is mainly a marketplace these days, with the overwhelming majority of products sold by 3rd party vendors. You will see a wide range of products, and pricing, as you noticed here.
Always shop around. Don't assume that just because its on Amazon|Overstock|Walmart|whatever, that it must be a good deal.
Isn't that pretty much the only pay these people get, though?
And let's not forget, a lot of people are, for many different reasons. Maybe they're not expecting to stay in the house forever, maybe it's a group of housemates who are buying 'disposable' furniture to avoid dealing with ownership issues, maybe they're low-income.
I really think a lot of this has to do with people's lives and careers being less predictable than they were a few decades ago.
We're back to taking antiques from family members and just reupholstering. The only newer furniture we have that doesn't suck came from Pottery Barn about 10 years ago and has tags from North Carolina.
I don't mind buying online as long as there are free in-store returns, but that tends to limit me to things like Target, Bed Bath, and a couple others. Some, like West Elm are really sneaky here. A lot of their items are just in a warehouse and are "web only." If it isn't a local warehouse, they don't do free in-store returns, so you again get hit with the ridiculous fee.
I hope to god Amazon does something with free in-store returns with all the Whole Foods real estate they purchased. If you could drop something off (and not worry about packaging it up for return shipping with FedEx), have them handle the return and be done with it, that would save me a lot of headaches AND make me spend a lot more for large online furniture purchases.
In the meantime, I've started experimenting with Modsy, which is great because they have 3d renderings of all the products from various stores, so at least I know the dimensions will be right, and the color should hopefully be a bit more on point. It also lets me visualize it in my space with lots of other stuff which is half the problem. Seriously, the renderings have to be seen to be believed.
I'll defer to you, as I haven't actually even been in one, personally.
There's no point looking at a mattress in person; poking and lying down on it doesn't tell you what it's like to sleep on, so you have to go on reviews anyway.
A divan is just a box for the mattress to go on. I wanted some particular mechanical properties, which i could check by sending emails. Staff in a shop wouldn't have had a clue.
https://www.landofbeds.co.uk/sleepeezee/ottoman-beds/fabric/...
Pillows are pretty much all the same to me and are replaced regularly so I'll buy those online if there's a sale.
Madness.
When it arrived they put it together and everything was fine. Then a month later a seam popped. I called them and they said, "We can send someone to fix it, no charge, or give you $230, your choice". I assume $230 was the cost of repair.
Frame looks to be oriented strandboard: https://homereserve.com/features
I'm pretty rough on things, and one of the strand board back pieces has broken twice. They've mailed me replacements pretty quickly, but I do wish it were a stronger material.
That means successful furniture stores have become massive, so you can see the goods and buy immediately. In the midwest, Berkshire's Nebraska Furniture Mart and Ikea are are difficult to beat for staple furniture.
But once you see it at Nebraska Furniture Mart (or something from the same manufacturer) you get an awfully sweet deal on it online. That's the near-term play. The long-term play of getting people to buy sight unseen will be far more difficult; Wayfair has traditionally tried price and ease of shipping/returns, but that only goes so far.
One confusing and annoying problem with retailers like Wayfair, and the many other outlets (Overstock, Barcelona Designs and many others), is that most of their inventory is white-labeled; they buy no-brand products from Asia (China being the main one) which they sell under fictional brand names such as "Ivy Bronx", "Langley Street", "Wade Logan" and so on. You'll find the exact same products elsewhere under other fictional brand names. Often I've been able to find a product, such as a lamp, that's maybe $100 on Wayfair, being sold for $200 in a different online store; exact same product, made in the same Chinese factory, but differently branded.
The shadiness undermines the integrity of the brand, but it means it's also impossible to predict the quality of what you order. "Langley Street" is just a style, and isn't necessarily all from the same manufacturer. This confusion is compounded by the fact that Wayfair also mixes "authentic" products such as Flos and Artemide into their inventory.
But also, a lot of these products are just complete junk. So much is laminate, cardboard and fiberboard. There's surprisingly good, solid-wood furniture made in places like India and Thailand, but usually the online descriptions doesn't give you the full materials list. A lot of times you can get quality hardwood, but the joinery is terrible (lots of patching, glue, etc.).
Most retail furniture stores in the US (Blu Dot, Room and Board, West Elm, Herman Miller, Vitra, Knoll, Steelcase, etc.) either design their own furniture in-house or have name-brand designers (e.g. Eames, Jasper Morrison, etc.) they collaborate with. (Sometimes the manufacturer also produces their own "generic" white-labeled versions; for example, the factory that makes Knoll sofas apparently also makes identical/near-identical no-name sofas that are sold under different brand names at much, much lower prices, and if you have some inside information you can find out where to get these.)
Then there are high-end retailers like DWR, YLiving, Lumens, etc. that are more like Amazon in that they mostly don't rely on white-labeling.
Not with 100 percent certainly, but a lot better than some staged photos on a website.
If I always get crap I can plan around it - sometimes I do need just crap as a stop gap.
If it's unreliable and can't predict based on price and descriptions, I just won't bother.
That's the last time I purchase furniture online.
However, when my wife bought a chair on Wayfair, we didn't have any issues. I'd definitely do it again. It all depends on who you buy from.
You really need to see the couch in person before buying it. It’s really hard to judge quality otherwise. You need to feel the fabric of the sofa, sit and lay down on it to feel the cushions, and see the color in person. Our first trip to Ikea was meticulously researched, but when we saw the options we had chosen online in person we completely changed our minds.
We did find a couch we loved on Wayfair but there were few photos and the description of the item was incorrect. The item was a chaise sectional listed as reversible (the chaise could be switched between the left and right sides) but the item listed two separate prices for left vs. right. When I messaged Wayfair about the issue through their ‘Questions’ option on the item they responded quickly only to say that the item description was incorrect and it was not reversible. However, the item’s description currently remains incorrect and my question was not made public like the others. This, combined with the fact that no official dimensions are included in the item description makes me think Wayfair is a dressed up Alibaba for furniture, and not a serious online option like Article, which at least has a lot of good quality photos per item.
Interestingly, I just checked and it looks like they've corrected the description after I left a 1-star review about it.
In addition to the dot com madness, furniture is expensive to warehouse and ship.