Yes. Furniture is the worst. You have to buy something high end to get any sort of quality, especially couches. This will sound crazy but I have a very expensive couch that was made in the 1970s and it is perfect. I also have a 1k sectional couch from Ashley's and it is absolutely terrible. Now I could probably fix the sectional with some diy hacks to firm it up but I don't have the skill. But that super expensive heirloom just keeps going.
Somewhat related, I read the book "Factory Man" [1] probably five years ago now. It's a story of a guy who came from a big furniture producing family that had several factory towns in Virginia I believe.
Anyway, talks about how they got started out in the late 1800s and how starting in the 1980s things started getting cheaper and cheaper and then started getting moved to China for manufacture.
Then it gets into how this guy worked to actually keep the company he inherited up and running in the US.
Was pre-2016, but the book definitely had undertones of all the big "culture" stories that went around that election.
The low end market keeps growing because it's all people can afford. Because salaries are not keeping up with productivity, and outside of white collar jobs, are struggling to keep up with inflation.
They assume it's high end because, to them, it is.
You can’t get people to spend enough on furniture that’ll last a century if they know it’ll be replaced once it’s out of fashion. People generally don’t keep a couch forever, even if it isn’t broken.
We go to a smallish local furniture store. Nothing there is really cheap (almost everything is over $1000) and you most likely have to order something (they only have display models). But every piece we've purchased from there has held up perfectly.
I'm sitting on a Flexsteel couch right now that is ten years old and takes a regular beating from four young kids, as well as a lot of use by adults. It's still as good as new.
I feel like kids are (probably) hard on fabrics and textile coverings, teenagers are hard on everything, and adults are hard on foam supports (if only because weight and body size). Just some assumptions!
Yeah, that seems about right. My kids like to jump on every part of the couch (arms and back as well as the cushions), but their weight (or lack thereof) prevents them from being able to do too much damage. We don't have teens yet, but I suspect that they'll continue to abuse the furniture (sitting on the arms, for instance) while also being heavy enough to do damage.
