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.
Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#52Furniture 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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#53I 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,…
I wonder if it would be worth the square footage to showcase a limited selection of furniture in various corners of a Whole Foods.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#54Wayfair (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.).
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#55I'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…
so.. you're saying shipping weight is an indicator?
Well, it can indicate what the materials are, like if it's solid wood or not. It can't really indicate how it's put together.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#56If 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 qui…
"they have tons of sales people making handsome commissions"
Isn't that pretty much the only pay these people get, though?
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#57I 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,…
I wonder if it would be worth the square footage to showcase a limited selection of furniture in various corners of a Whole Foods.
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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#58Wayfair (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-…
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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#59I 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…
Interestingly specialized vendor. Made to order, in USA. Upholstered furniture only.
Frame looks to be oriented strandboard: https://homereserve.com/features
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#60Who 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.
Who would ever buy a book online without being able to leaf through its pages?
I don't need to see a book to get an idea of it's contents. I do need to lay on a couch to see if it's something I'd feel like taking a nap on.