Should furniture be more comfortable than beautiful… Could it be both?

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Just like the style of clothing you wear can symbolize your personality and lifestyle, furniture has the same affect. Life is all about impressions whether you are trying to get a job or impress that cute girl you met last Saturday at your favorite coffee shop. The right furniture can make a great impression on a company as well as liven up any room. Not always the furniture that compliments your style meets your standards of being comfortable. It is a common problem among potential customers in the furniture market. Trends and tastes change while what you determine comfortable does not. Think of it as a racing/bucket seat in a race car. The purpose of the seat is to hug the driver keeping him or her stable, but the owner of the car still wants an appealing look. As I stated in the title, “could it be both”? Well, the answer is yes it can. Many furniture stores give you the option of finding quality brands such as FLEXSTEEL, Best Home Furnishings, Southern Motion and many more that give you the option of custom upholstery and some design features. At first all the options can become overwhelming to a customer unless you are working with somebody knowledgeable on the product. It can actually be very easy to find the right furniture that sits right and has your preferred style. Now in more upscale stores the customer finds what is comfortable to them, and the salesman can build the product to their liking from there. Instead of a traditional “what you see is what you get”, you can now look at furniture as a blank canvas waiting to be painted on with your personal preferences, such as upholstery, power, manual, motion headrest, and so much more.

Don’t get me wrong though, the traditional “what you see is what you get” layout is still a great option to have especially if you need furniture right away, or at a less expensive price point. A common question I get Is why furniture that you cannot customize is less expensive as furniture that you can. They feel like they are paying more for a sofa just because it has the options to change features even if you do not customize the sofa at hand in any way. The reason behind that is because some companies mass produce their product. They will make a thousand of one sofa in one color. There are lots of advantages to this such as a less expensive piece of furniture that still has the quality that anybody would want. It is also a better option when you have not done any interior design work to your home, especially a brand new house. In this case you have the option to build the room around your furniture that you got at a less expensive price due to being mass produced instead of designing the furniture around the room. There are benefits in customization as well as the “what you see is what you get” furniture”. Furniture stores now usually have a section full of the customizable furniture and the mass produced furniture which is usually referred to as a clearance center due to the prices being lower. This allows a store to have options for customers of all price points, interior design needs, and personal preferences.
An example of companies mass producing product in one specific way to lower costs, but still deliver quality is Henry Ford. Henry Ford was the founder of the extremely popular American automobile company Ford. A common misconception is that Ford was the first automobile company out there. It was not. Ford was the first one to make an automobile that was affordable to the average family. How did Henry Ford do it? Ford made their automobiles in one color only, black. If you were not a fan of black paint, you also had the second option of black. This saved the company money allowing them to sell automobiles less expensive, because they did not have to pay to keep other colors in stock. It was mass produced one way like some furniture companies do. Ashley is very well known for this. Instead of having options they mass produce a certain model one way, in one fabric. Instead of saving money on paint they save money on fabrics.

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