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Parable of the Sofa

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Re: Parable of the Sofa

#171

Post by istultus »

Let me posit an ad-hoc theory built on our anchoring bias in regards to price and our inability to think in terms of inflation/hyperbolic discounting:

tl;dr - Once a cheap alternative is on the market, us frugal folks can't imagine paying for what was once the default and only option, distorting our understanding of what constitutes good quality

* He says buying a new sofa of the same quality today would cost upwards of $5000, and he paid more than $3000 for it in 1999. He paid $1000 now to reupholster.

* Using US inflation data which is easier to access, $3000 in '99 is around $5600 today - so practically unchanged.

* What's changed? Since the emergence of cheap badly-built furniture, it now _feels_ profligate to spend $5000 on a sofa, when in 1999 it was (hypothetically) the only option.

* Instead people feel better buying a (say) $800 IKEA sofa every 5 years, which over 25 years is the $4000 nominal he has spent on his own sofa. It _feels_ much less painful to give IKEA $800 now than to give your local artisan sofa maker $5000. Who profits from that? You moreso than the local artisan.

* It's true that the middle has been hollowed out - I can't find a well-made $1500 sofa, but on the plus side the less affluent have access to cheap sofas, and the affluent but frugal whinge and buy a new sofa every few years.

I'm squarely in the frugal bracket, if not affluent...

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#172

Post by PontifexMinimus »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #75
tmnvix wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant portion of the cost is labour, so if you translate that into a local non-US cost does it still seem absurd? I may have misunderstood your point, but I don't think it is a good argument for why running a business fixing things using local labour should be a fantasy. Aside from that, in my view a world where a sofa costs less than one weeks wages is the absurd and unsustainable one. We've adopted an attit…

I think there are two issues that are going in parallel 1. fixing stuff As long as some dude on the other side of the world is willing to make a new sofa and send it to you for cheaper than it is to fix it locally, the idea of fixing it locally will just never take off. You can ban/limit international trade, but then you're just screwing over poor people on the other end of the world for a "feel good" kind of thing 2…

> not making cheap crap. You can find some way to disincentivize making cheap stuff. Ban IKEA.. etc.

As I type my keyboard is sitting on an Ikea desk. It's cheap, it's simple, it does the job and I'm happy with it.

Cheap stuff is not the problem. Crappy cheap stuff (and crappy expensive stuff!!!) is.

For example, I have two radios in my house that I don't use? Why because the crappy power leads have frayed and I can only use them with batteries.

Or again, I bought a kettle 2 years ago that stopped working after 6 months.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#173

Post by mrob »

bunnie wrote: post #42

The bit about "lifestyle business" always being uttered in contempt resonated with me. I always assumed it was just me being overly sensitive to folks expressing concern over my life choices, urging me to snap out of my "mid-life crisis" and do something "useful" like raise money and scale up, or "apply myself" at famous institutions with "real impact".

I'm reminded of what happened to Instant Brands. They made a series of popular electric pressure cookers, but instead of remaining a successful medium-sized business, they took on a lot of debt in an attempt to expand, then went bankrupt when interest rates increased. Previous HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36310733

It's disappointing to see, because the products were genuinely good.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#174

Post by benrutter »

wodenokoto wrote: post #134
Micoloth wrote: post #110

Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist? Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated. Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. Small business vs big brand…

I was thinking the same thing. So, how is that story going to help me? Apparently, I can't buy a sofa of this quality any more, and if I want it fixed, I apparently have to go to Canada.

I don't know, assuming you agree with the article's conclusions couldn't you just buy second hand and refurbish when possible?

The article mentions a canadian refurbisher, but I don't think it implies they don't exist elsewhere.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#175

Post by xwowsersx »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #51

If you get out of the US bubble, the prices are simply insane fix a sofa: it's equivalent to a month's salary/stipend here in Asia. 200 bowls of noodle (if it's a cheap noodle then it's more like 500) new sofa: "new leather sofas of the “not flat-packed sawdust and glue” variety quickly get into five figures" So like a year's worth of stipend/expenses Could be that just the US dollar is crazy - but until the economic…

> but until the economic disbalances of the world doesn't equilibrate (that's on a centenial scale), it's never going to make sense to fix a sofa

Could you elaborate? I'm not quite understanding your point, and I may be misinterpreting the sentence.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#176

Post by bryanrasmussen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #56
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... maybe, theoretically you could assess if the expensive furniture was crap or not but in practice it's problematic, so you pay for some expensive crap. Also the thing is that IKEA hollowed out the middle market, there is only cheap crap, medium crap but still crap, expensive crap that masquerades as expensive quality, and expensive quality. The sofa that the author bought was not expensive quality, it was medi…

It's not Denmark-specific. Hollowing out the middle has happened across every product and service class everywhere in the west. It's a broad problem, in no way limited to sofas.

I figured, but observations outside Denmark are on my side shallow ones.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#177

Post by fnordpiglet »

wodenokoto wrote: post #134
Micoloth wrote: post #110

Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist? Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated. Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. Small business vs big brand…

I was thinking the same thing. So, how is that story going to help me? Apparently, I can't buy a sofa of this quality any more, and if I want it fixed, I apparently have to go to Canada.

You can actually buy sofas of quality. The easiest way is to go to the local design center (most cities have one and if you’re not in a city you can drive to the closest and visit) and you’ll often find many retailers selling high quality furniture. It’s the stuff that’s kind of expensive but not so heavily styled as to incur a crazy premium just for looking expensive. You will be able to see it as it’ll look like Tim’s sofa but costs 2x or more what said sofa would cost on Wayfair. They’re often but not always made in the North Carolina region stateside, other locales seem to be Ohio and Pennsylvania.

We bought such a sofa per advice from a friend that’s an interior designer, and it’s amazing. At 10 years it looks like it was brand new and has withstood the first 10 years of baby life including playdates and kids drawing on it, etc (we got it with a special treatment to make it not absorb such things and it actually worked). Kids jumping off the back frame, throwing all the cushions around, etc. Literally unblemished and the internal frame is rock solid.

But also the single most expensive piece of furniture I’ll ever buy. I’ll never need to buy a replacement for it though. I expect to be using it for the rest of my life and passing it onto my descendants.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#178

Post by mariusor »

azubinski wrote: post #122

Well, it started with: "So we had them replaced, at a fair price, by a small local business. Which is something that modern capitalism is trying to make impossible" And then there was lot of blah-blah-blah about small local business which thanks to those "modern capitalism" is possible and exists. But what is "fair price" is still unknown from whose point of view it is fair. So, let use the same style (it is the styl…

> If you want to rise popularity of your blog in many modern capitalism countries, always start any blog record with any form of modern capitalism blaming

As this forum is mostly populated with techies, one would hope Tim Bray is a known name which doesn't need increasing his blog's popularity, or being suspect of pulling such stunts. :)

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#179

Post by beowulfey »

Micoloth wrote: post #110

Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist? Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated. Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it. Small business vs big brand…

The point of the article is that the big business model is "continued growth", which depends on constantly increasing sales, which means products necessarily get shittier so that they must be replaced more frequently. Small "lifestyle" businesses do not operate under this principle and encourage reuse and renewal. They represent opposing philosophies.

Whether you can "just" get a sofa from big business or not, that is precisely what they hope for, and ideally you should be purchasing a sofa more frequently than you already do to further support this notion.

Re: Parable of the Sofa

#180

Post by piloto_ciego »

satisfice wrote: post #50

Hooray for lifestyle businesses! I started my company in 1999 with my wife and I around the kitchen table. My vision: a consulting company that never told a lie to a client. With that philosophy and 25 years of work we have built the company into two people around the same kitchen table.

That is admirable though. I ran a little consultancy for a few years - it never exploded in size or grew beyond me, but I could always look myself in the mirror.
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