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Comment by achenatx | Hacker News Reader

why would I want my furniture to last 20 years? My wife will cycle pieces after 5-10 because she wants something new.

We also have moved ikea couches multiple times and they are fine. It is easy to get replacement cushions when the kids spill stuff on the couches and when the wife decides she wants to get rid of it, it doesnt bother me. We have had our ikea for 6-7 years now, but before that we had very expensive louis shanks furniture and when her tastes changed to modern we got rid of it all.

She wants to change the dining room furniture, but at 1K per chair with 12 chairs that is not happening.

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> why would I want my furniture to last 20 years? My wife will cycle pieces after 5-10 because she wants something new.

I was always wondering where people's disposable income went :-))

> she wants something new

Probably because the marketing industry has tricked us into this way of thinking. The traditional model of buying good quality 'goods' and passing them through generations is not good for business. They even managed to sell bottled water and a lot of people drive SUVs to go to the shops. I bought a couch recently and I could not find one with washable covers. Companies love selling tacky shit that we'll have to replace in a few years and it's terrible for the planet. I feel there should be a tax on fragile, low quality junk or perhaps a 10 year warranty or disposal costs baked into the price. The external cost of the pollution (microplastics, e-waste etc) is not factored into the price of anything. I try to buy used if I can but admittedly it's not always easy to make the trades compared to buying from a retail box store.

> Probably because the marketing industry has tricked us into this way of thinking.

There's no trick about it. Lots of people like new things. Lots of people get new phones, new cars, new TVs, new clothes, new video games, and yes new furniture.

Almost nobody cares about the griping of a few curmudgeons complaining about what they think is tacky or terrible for the planet -- not even most self-proclaimed environmentalists you see flying around the world with the latest gadgets and expensive clothes.

> There's no trick about it. Lots of people like new things.

I think you missed OP’s point. Why do you think lots of people like to buy new things? They weren’t born with an instinctive desire to do something that happens to directly profit companies.

I didn't miss OP's point. Go back to before there was a marketing industry, before there were corporations even. People liked shiny things. Greed, gluttony, envy, these are all part of the human condition. We had these things inside us before we came down from the trees.

When I buy furniture, I buy it for life despite the premium I pay.

> My wife will cycle pieces after 5-10 because she wants something new

It's the cirrrrcle of consumerrrr capitalismmmmmmm

Resale of Ikea is close to zero unlike those 1k chairs. The only fool is the poor person unable to afford furniture that holds it's value. When you're ready for something new, you can actually sell the old gear for non-trivial amount.

I haven't seen this hold true at all.

People who know what a Knoll Wassily is worth and are willing to pay anything near what it's worth just buy a new one.

To everyone else, it's just that weird leather chair you see in every office because of knockoffs, and you'll be competing with knockoffs on pricing. The fact you put "ORIGINAL KNOLL" in your listing won't mean anything to them.

Around here Facebook Marketplace is chock full of furniture like that. While I was waiting for my furniture to be shipped across the chair I was looking for a temporary dining set: I ended up with $2,000 marble table for $300 because the owner had underestimated how long it'd take to sell and needed someone to pick it up in 48 hours.

This is very true, the bottom of the market for antique furniture has completely fallen out. Prices are 70-90% reduced from the peak around the early 2000s. Millenials hate the kind of dark, heavy, ornate wooden furniture that used to be top of the line. Even if they liked it, they don't have homes big enough for half of it.

BS. There is a thriving ecosystem of ikea furniture in this city that sells for half price. It actually gets better prices because models are well known.

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