You can actually buy sofas of quality. The easiest way is to go to the local design center (most cities have one and if you’re not in a city you can drive to the closest and visit) and you’ll often find many retailers selling high quality furniture. It’s the stuff that’s kind of expensive but not so heavily styled as to incur a crazy premium just for looking expensive. You will be able to see it as it’ll look like Tim’s sofa but costs 2x or more what said sofa would cost on Wayfair. They’re often but not always made in the North Carolina region stateside, other locales seem to be Ohio and Pennsylvania.
We bought such a sofa per advice from a friend that’s an interior designer, and it’s amazing. At 10 years it looks like it was brand new and has withstood the first 10 years of baby life including playdates and kids drawing on it, etc (we got it with a special treatment to make it not absorb such things and it actually worked). Kids jumping off the back frame, throwing all the cushions around, etc. Literally unblemished and the internal frame is rock solid.
But also the single most expensive piece of furniture I’ll ever buy. I’ll never need to buy a replacement for it though. I expect to be using it for the rest of my life and passing it onto my descendants.
Read the Dwell article referenced in the article to learn that the whole ecosystem of the North Carolina furniture industry is dying out rapidly due to the onslaught of cheap, light, shippable, assemble-at-destination flatpack furniture.
We have a 20-year-old quality sofa from a major NC company that we got reupholstered by them last year, just before they went out of business.
Yeah. I expect only the best craftsman paired with the best businessmen will survive. But there’s a decent market among the affluent for quality furniture and most commercial furniture for high traffic environments demand pretty high end and durable stuff.
We bought such a sofa per advice from a friend that’s an interior designer, and it’s amazing. At 10 years it looks like it was brand new and has withstood the first 10 years of baby life including playdates and kids drawing on it, etc (we got it with a special treatment to make it not absorb such things and it actually worked). Kids jumping off the back frame, throwing all the cushions around, etc. Literally unblemished and the internal frame is rock solid.
But also the single most expensive piece of furniture I’ll ever buy. I’ll never need to buy a replacement for it though. I expect to be using it for the rest of my life and passing it onto my descendants.