Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 01:12:30 -0500
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Comments: Originally-From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Subject: TOURBUS -- 6 JULY 00 -- FURNITURE SHOPPING ON THE WEB
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TOURBUS Volume 5, Number 107 -- 6 July 2000
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FIVE YEARS of Searchable Archives at http://www.TOURBUS.com !!
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
Furniture Shopping on the Web
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESS(ES):
Yep. We've got addresses.
Howdy, y'all, and greetings from the windy city of Chicago, Illinois!
I want to thank the folks at WGN Radio in Chicago, and especially
everyone at the Steve and Johnnie show, for letting me hang out in the
studios this week (hi, Neesy!). :)
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On with the show ...
-----------------------------
Furniture Shopping on the Web
-----------------------------
Back on 19 May 2000, I mentioned that
I really want to write a TOURBUS post about how you can buy
furniture on the Web, but I have absolutely no idea where to
begin. Can you recommend any Web sites that sell high quality
furniture -- Henredon, Hooker, Henkel Harris, and so on -- at
wholesale prices?
Well, thanks to the help of the squillions upon squillions of TOURBUS
riders (35), I am now ready to write that post.
That's the good news. The bad news is that, from what I have seen
after six weeks of research, furniture shopping on the Web just ain't
ready for prime time. Here's why:
1. ONLINE 'WINDOW-SHOPPING' IS DARNED NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. When you
walk into a real-world furniture store, you can closely
examine every piece of furniture. Furniture stores let you
"kick the tires," so to speak, letting you see which furniture
is good and which is garbage.
You can't do that online.
This is kind of complicated, but almost every picture on the
Web is, by design, stored at an extremely low resolution (72
pixels per inch). That's why the pictures you print from the
Web look so bad: they're REALLY low quality (by way of
comparison, a bottom-end printer prints at about 300 pixels
per inch). At 72 pixels per inch, it is hard to tell the
difference between a picture of a $7,500 mahogany bed hand-
carved in North Carolina and a $250 pressboard bed machine-
stamped in Hong Kong. Caveat emptor.
You can bypass this low resolution limitation, however, if you
know model number and manufacturer of a particular piece of
furniture, but ...
2. MODEL NUMBERS AND MANUFACTURERS ARE QUITE HARD TO FIND ONLINE,
ESPECIALLY FOR HIGH-QUALITY FURNITURE. Most of the online
furniture stores I visited will give you a free price quote
provided you know the furniture's model number and
manufacturer. Unfortunately, many furniture manufacturers
don't want this information posted on the Web, and many online
furniture stores don't provide it (I'll explain why in a
minute). Because of this, to find the model number and
manufacturer of a particular piece furniture so that you can
get a price quote from an online furniture store, you very
well may have to visit a real-world furniture store first.
3. SHIPPING CAN BE A PROBLEM. This pretty much goes without
saying. When you purchase furniture from a real-world
furniture store, that store acts as an intermediary, making
sure that the furniture that is delivered and installed in
your home is perfect. In effect, the furniture store assumes
the responsibility of giving you a good product. That level
of service is not always available from online furniture
stores (although some online furniture stores offer excellent
delivery and installation services ... for a price).
4. THE DAYS OF AMAZING E-BARGAINS MAY BE COMING TO AN END. The
recent e-commerce stock meltdown has effected the online
furniture stores as well. Furniture.com recently slashed its
workforce by 41 percent. And many furniture manufacturers
aren't too happy with the entire online furniture market.
Online furniture stores are taking business away from real-
world furniture stores who are the manufacturer's "bread and
butter." To keep the real-world stores happy, furniture
manufacturers are starting to throw up roadblocks ranging from
prohibiting online stores from posting the manufacturer's
catalog on the Net all the way to instituting "minimum retail
price" policies.
A minimum retail price policy works like this. The
manufacturer sets a retail price for a particular piece of
furniture (say $1,000) and a minimum retail price (say $600).
Furniture stores both online and off are free to set their own
price for the furniture, but if they sell that furniture for
less than the minimum retail price, they lose the right to
sell that manufacturer's furniture in the future. Such a
policy narrows the gap between the price you get from a real-
world furniture store and from one online.
Amazing furniture bargains are still available on the Net, but
as more manufacturers enact minimum retail price policies,
these bargains may stop being so ... well ... "amazing." :)
My suggestion? Go to a local furniture store, get the model number
and manufacturer of a piece of furniture you want, get a price quote
from one or two online furniture stores (including shipping), take
those quotes back to your local furniture store, and ask them to match
it. That's what I did, and I saved several thousand dollars ... and I
kept my money in my local community. :)
By the way, not everyone agrees with my assessment of the online
furniture industry. Fellow TOURBUS rider Jeff Miller recently
bought an elegant dining room table with chairs from
http://www.furniture.com/
We were most pleased with the service, timelines promised, and
delivery. It was delivered within the timeframe promised. The
delivery company actually brought it into the house and assembled
the various pieces for us, and took the packing material away as
well.
We were unable to find a set anywhere around us that we really
liked. Using the web enabled us to save time, gas money, and
frustrations of dealing with pushy sales people.
So, what are some of the best online furniture stores? I was really
impressed with Lexington Furniture Company, one of the few stores that
provide pictures and model numbers for a couple high-quality furniture
manufacturers. Their prices are pretty good, too (the prices aren't
posted on the Net, though -- you have to request a price quote by fax,
phone, or email). You can find Lexington Furniture Company on the Web
at
http://www.lexfurniture.com/ .
What other sites do our fellow TOURBUS riders recommend? "Bill"
writes that
An acquaintance of mine has opened a site called
http://furniturepricedrite.com/ . He has been in the furniture
business for years and sees this as he next step .
Jean R. Hutton says that
You might want to check out the
http://www.hickoryfurnituremart.com/ site.
Huge selection, NC prices, they ship anywhere, etc., etc.
Crystal Heshmat recently visited
http://www.kozyhome.com/ on the recommendation of friends who had
bought furniture there and are very happy with their purchases.
KozyHome has a lot of really good stuff and I like the 3D
galleries that let you look all around the room. There's also a
nice discount for registering - 15% off all purchases for 30 days
- and automatic entry in the monthly drawing for a $5000 shopping
spree.
Our international riders will appreciate this. Steve Collins
furnished my bedroom from www.Quixtar.com they appear to have
partnerships with many suppliers of a wide variety of items.
Decent furniture and they beat out the local retail store by over
$150 shipping & handling included, they appeared to be able to
deliver to a variety of countries as well.
Pete Simpson writes about a site in the UK:
Whilst not dedicated to furniture I have used the shopping site
run by The Guardian newspaper http://www.shoppingunlimited.co.uk/
as a good starting point many times. Sure, it has a UK slant but
is not restricted to that e.g links to New York MoMA site in
the interiors section.
Phil Jones also plugs a site in the UK -- HIS! :)
Checkout http://www.furniturebusters.com/
We are the lowest priced furniture E-Tailer in the UK.
Feel free to browse our catalogue, although it is going under
major surgery at the moment !
Both Karen Maddry and Kathleen Mammoser recommend one of the sites I
actually used to obtain a price quote:
http://www.rosefurniture.com/ Rose Furniture Company - discount
brand furniture from High Point, North Carolina. This is a
company I've bought from several times. They can get anything
and at a substantial discount. They ship for free, as well.
If you are into furniture manufactured by Sauder, Bill Pugh recommends
Advanced Furniture Outfitters at http://www.afo.com/ . If you are
looking for "design" furniture, Michael Penland recommends Design
Within Reach at http://www.dwr.com/ .
Barbara Cooper shows what a great friend she is:
Check out my friends Keith and Bernadette at Sarita furniture:
http://www.sarita.net/index.html
This is a small business that offers really unique and classy
furniture.
Ed Brindza recommends
http://www.innandtravel.com 40-6-% savings on 400+ top name home
furnishing and decorating accessories for home and garden for the
past 13 years - yes, prior to the Internet. While the original
program was established just for innkeepers - thus the name - Inn
& Travel, the products are available to any member.
Molly Fiedler successfully and happily
ordered my living room furniture on-line from
http://www.simplytogether.com/
It is really cool and high quality. The best part for me, an
apartment dweller is that it is modular. It all comes apart. It
doesn't feel like it. No one knows it comes apart unless I tell
them. It comes with some serious hardware and requires assembly.
It didn't take long. In about an hour I'd assembled a sofa, chair
and ottoman with articulating tray. The articulating tray makes
my livingroom useful for my laptop and a great place for popcorn
etc.
Tammy Chandler used
http://www.housedressing.com/ out of North Carolina. Our
purchase was 1/3 of the retail cost and delivery, quality, etc.
was tip top. The actual website doesn't have that much as far as
browsing, but if you know what you want (manufacturer, style #,
etc.), you can either call or email them and they will give you
their price. I just shop around town to find what I like and
call them for a much cheaper price. So far, they have had
everything I've inquired about.
I hope this gives you some ideas. Happy furniture hunting!
That's it for this week. Have a safe and happy weekend, and we'll
talk again next week. :)
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
Furniture Shopping on the Web
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESS(ES):
Yep. We've got addresses.
---------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE WEEK
---------------------------------
BUBBA-FET (noun). The bounty hunter in Star Wars.
Usage: "Sure, Darth Maul was cool, but I still like Bubba Fet!"
[Special thanks go to ME for today's word]
You can find all of the old Southern Words of the day at
http://netsquirrel.com/crispen/word.html
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