Reminds me of furniture.com's high profile failure -- worth reading about.
In addition to the dot com madness, furniture is expensive to warehouse and ship.
Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
71–80 of 90 posts
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#72Who 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.
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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#73If 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…
> If you're looking for a $249 couch
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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#74If 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…
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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Solid wood is actually far lighter per cubic food than most composite materials. Glue is rather dense compared to wood.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#76Wayfair (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-…
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'.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Solid wood is actually far lighter per cubic food than most composite materials. Glue is rather dense compared to wood.
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Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Solid wood is actually far lighter per cubic food than most composite materials. Glue is rather dense compared to wood.
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).
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#79I 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…
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.
Re: Buy a Sofa Online? Wayfair Is Counting on It
#80Who 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.
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 ar…
> Pillows are pretty much all the same to me
Madness.