New $3k Couch Might Be Garbage in Three Years

Ours is a little on the firmer side, but that can be remedied with a topper.

OMF still offers 'real coil spring' mattresses where the coils are thicker and connected with wire to help distribute the load. The mattresses are also able to be flipped vertically.

The best part is, the mattresses are typically hundreds or thousands cheaper than you'll pay for a 'name brand' mattress. What I like to do is buy a firm mattress and top with a separate pillow topper from amazon.

That said, one of the biggest gamechangers I've noticed for sleep regardless of mattress type is actually the box spring. Box springs suck, the bed frames that use arched wooden slats for support instead of a box spring feel way more comfortable and supportive, even with the same mattress.

Unaffiliated plug, but there is a sofa shop in the Castro in SF (I think they also have a location in the East Bay) where we bought our new couch a couple years ago. The brothers who own the business were very patient about explaining the different kinds of cushion materials and how we could expect them to wear, let us take home several books of fabric swatches to compare within our own home (for days!), and told us if we didn't like the feet once it got to our place they would switch them out for free. Needless to say, that buying experience is completely different from a corporate store.

It only wound up costing 10-20% more than the similar couches we were evaluating at retail shops and has been so much more comfortable and so much more durable than the furniture we ever bought from those places. They've got an outstanding warranty, so we know if we ever did experience unexpected wear and tear they would replace it immediately, and that if 5 or 10 years from now we want to refresh the cushion they can help us with that too.

Just like that small software startup is beating the big guys at the same game...You may have a local furniture shop within your local area that can offer you a much better quality to price ratio and bring your money right back into the local economy instead of sending it to a distant conglomerate.

The family room, which gets a lot more use, was from a local furniture store. It was double the price and probably 3-4x as "good". I expect it will last for 20 years.

> Buck at Rochester Institute of Technology says consumers could be better off spending a few thousand dollars to reupholster a thrift-store find or hand-me-down. “Most often the construction of vintage sofas will be superior to what’s made now,” Buck says.

This was my conclusion as well, but we still bought a cheap one. We just bought it from some guy who was selling his whole living room for a grand, so I don't mind too much if they fall apart in a few years. Build quality is not there for the wooden parts (I did my handyman thing there), but the leather at least is claimed to be top grain.

Set a budget, look at your options. Realize that perfection is not possible and get the best option to fit your needs within your budget. If you do research and ask around, you might be able to maximize your value for what you pay.

If I had to guess, I think the undue influence we give to MBAs leads to things like financialization of products. This means cost cutting and profit maximization. I think it's probably that combination that led to this. It wouldn't surprise me if the MBAs decided they could cut quality, outsource, and increase the price at the same time because it could be shown on a spreadsheet so obviously that dictates what should be done.

Not the cheapest, but in your range. They don't skimp on the quality and will tell you exactly which shop built it (most of their sofas are from various shops in North Carolina).

Forcing a level of quality would force a higher price point, which would price people out of access to the good. And no, "but the prices are still high" doesn't get you out of this jam. For as high as they are now, they would be even higher with quality guarantees.

So, if you want the "high quality" you're used to, that may mean spending more because you can afford to. And if you can't, then take solace in knowing that the product that's shitty to you is a new luxury to someone else.

Seriously, this type of short term thinking is a direct result of focusing on quarterly profits reports. Making shitty product that falls apart after a year boosts your sales next year

The way to fix it is to get rid of the system where idle shareholders extract every drop of value from companies while demanding ever more and move to one where companies have a goal of sustainably producing quality goods/services while treating employees well. Co-ops can be one model of this.

Also change the stock market to a simple way to get capital on a short term basis rather than an all consuming gambling machine. This means also having a way for folks to retire that doesn’t depend on them putting all their savings into a casino.

This might happen slowly, though you can count on the promise of high profit margins to make it happen sooner or later.

Of course, there are areas where we do have regulation, particularly when it comes to safety of products. This is a good option in many cases, though in many cases it would also be very difficult to define and enforce standards.

And there can be market problems such as oligopolies or monopolies that prevent robust competition from happening. In those cases, it can be up to antitrust regulators to correct the market.

Airfares are a perfect example. Airlines started offering garbage "Basic Economy" and still offered regular economy for a slightly higher price. What happened? Everyone still chose the cheapest no matter what, so Basic Economy rules the day.

I would also like to know what policy knobs to fiddle with that could change this situation, but I think the answer is probably something like "mumble mumble global finance capital".

Mature markets that reach enormous scale transform into a barbell shape, typically, with all the revenue being at the very top end, and the very bottom end.

Take furniture. In a new market you build a nice couch with decent materials that will last, and you charge a price that a middle-class income could afford. It will last, say, 15-20 years. You sell it, make money. Great.

Now a competitor comes along and makes a couch that will last 12-15 years. It's 20% cheaper, and your sales drop off a cliff. Your option is to lower your quality so you can lower your prices and compete, or go up market and _raise_ your prices, so you can stay in business.

Repeat this cycle many times, and you end up with nothing in the middle, because consumers will not buy (enough) things in the middle.

You can try to address this through quality regulation (ban certain materials, or require others, for example), which will raise the floor of the quality (in theory) while raising the floor price along with it. That will price people out of the market entirely, though.

You can place heavy import tariffs on products that are of lower quality coming from elsewhere in an attempt to create space for more locally produced mid-quality goods, but doing that prices out your poorer citizens from access to those goods entirely (and they won't like that, and will probably stop voting for you, eventually).

The problem is that human beings, on average, do _not_ value quality enough to keep a middle market alive.

people are poorer than they realize and are choosing to push their dollars towards more instant gratification. new phones, costco, lifesystle, doordash, living close to entertainment and cities. This is the myth of the middle class. earn good or great money but spend it all.

people worrying about what other people think. buying car, house, clothes

I bought a house outside DC. Unless I retire to the mountains, I'll grow old here. It's my second home, the other was a few miles away, I've been in this area since 2000. Pretty sure my middle-management position fits my squarely in "professional, upper-middle-class."

Most of my friends are similar. Moved here after college, no plans to leave the area, almost all are home owners, and upper-middle-class.

About the Purple mattress I will say: it is very heavy and difficult to move. And that grid stuff will last roughly forever. The only other non-personalized advice I would give about it is to feel an actual mattress, not a sample and not a pillow. The effect of the grid feels different when it's mattress-sized and with all the other layers, so the effect might not be what you're expecting if your only experience is a pillow or sample.

Thanks for this list, made some nice discovery!

More or less all non-designer (herman miller/knoll) non-craft furniture has been outsourced to IKEA and China which both trade price for quality. The entire American industry was killed, and with it, we lost high quality mid-range furniture.

Another way to look at this is that the sq ft per person has increased 50% in the US over the last 50 years. We choose to live in large, shit quality houses and in turn, fill them with loads of shit quality furniture.