Why do two products that look alike sometimes have very different prices?
Why do two products that look the same sometimes have vastly different price tags? Allow me to get on my soapbox and rant for a bit here. If something is cheaper, there is usually a reason.
But what causes the difference in price of two products that look to be the same? Is it all marketing and overhead? A bit of it, maybe - There are a few very overpriced and under-quality retailers out there spending the money you paid for their furniture and products on producing and sending more unsolicited catalogs the size of phone books and maintaining tasteful looking showrooms full of furniture fluffers in high rent districts.
BUT most of the time, the reason can be summed up in two words:
Value Engineering
From plumbing fixtures to lighting to furniture, value engineering happens all. the. time.
Big box stores and retail chains have determined what price their particular consumer is willing to pay for a particular product, and the big manufacturers have been forced to comply by creating a version that cuts corners on the less visible quality elements to meet those prices so they can sell to these chains.
The cheaper price for the “same” faucet at Home Depot vs the plumbing supply house does NOT mean that Home Depot has more “buying power” or is getting a better deal which they kindly pass on to you (seriously?).
What it DOES mean is that the Home Depot version has been “value engineered” to be able to sell at that price. Most often the cuts in quality are made to the inner workings that you can’t see and don’t even know about until the thing breaks.
Value engineered items are basically disposable versions of a better product. A higher quality faucet from a plumbing supply house, manufactured by a recognizable brand, will almost always be all brass interior construction and warrantied for replacement or repair should it fail, whereas the plastic parts in the value engineered version are not warrantied or generally repairable.
And value engineering is not even always limited to the parts you can’t see - years ago, I bought a shower valve for a bathroom from a Home Depot- we needed an inexpensive valve, and we needed it quickly. But when I opened the name brand package, the face plate of the shower valve was chrome colored PLASTIC! That takes value engineering to a whole new low.
The same value engineering happens with furnishings as well - and it is especially egregious in upholstery because there is no real way to “look under the hood” without taking the piece apart.
Cuts get made in upholstery quality all the time so certain retail chains can meet a particular price point that the store feels their consumer will pay.
A value engineered sofa is, by definition, not going to be top quality no matter who the manufacturer is - the whole idea is to make it cost less by taking out some of the expensive things that made it high quality .
For our own full service design clients, we commission a lot of our high quality upholstery from two small manufacturers down south. Last fall, I toured these facilities and got to see the quality construction in progress. I’m sharing some pictures and videos here of some of the steps in the process of manufacturing high quality upholstery.
About shipping…“Free” shipping just means the cost of shipping - which is sometimes higher than the value of the product, is rolled into the {taxable} price. It is costing a fair amount JUST for that sofa to get from the manufacturer to your house these days.
It gets driven by freight on an 18-wheeler to a warehouse with a loading dock in your area, checked in, and then delivered by a ‘white glove’ delivery company - which means at least two people who unpack it and carry it into your house and take away the packing material (as opposed to a freight line driver pushing the wrapped or boxed piece off the back of the lift gate somewhere in the vicinity of your driveway…)
So if the retailer is offering “free” delivery, or a flat fee less than the $300-$400 that all of that actually costs, just know the shipping and delivery is already rolled into the price.
Shipping companies are not altruistically delivering your packages from Amazon or Wayfair for the sheer joy of it. Shipping costs money, packaging costs money, trucks require fuel and maintenance, delivery people expect and deserve a paycheck. Nothing is actually free - someone is covering the cost and that someone is usually the consumer.
So whenever a company or furniture store or wherever is offering free shipping (or even a cheap flat rate for shipping), know that to figure out the value of the actual product you are paying for, you have to subtract the real cost of getting that item from wherever it was made to you from the cost of the product. If you are buying a $1500 sofa with “free” delivery, you are really buying a sofa with a retail worth closer to $1100.
A standard sized sofa requires a frame, a suspension system, cushions, and at least 17 yds of fabric depending on the sofa style and fabric pattern. Plus, someone has to actually put all that together so there are assemblers, finishers for any exposed wood parts, pattern cutters, and sewers involved. That is all essential to creating any sofa, so where are the cuts to quality made to value engineer the piece to a lower price point? The three most common places to cut quality in upholstery are:
the frame - both the construction and the materials,
the suspension…no one can do 8-way-hand-tied quality springs on a less expensive sofa and if they are claiming that, they are making huge compromises somewhere else, and
the cushion fill - both construction and materials. You cannot tell what the quality of the cushion fill is by sitting on a sofa for 5 or 10 minutes. That will tell you nothing about how comfortable it will be over the next week or year or 3.
Value engineered upholstery, like value engineered anything, is designed to be disposable. These stores WANT you to have to buy another one in a few years! The expected life span of a value engineered sofa is 3-ish years. It might not fall apart, but it probably won’t be comfortable for very long, and the guts will wear out long before the fabric does. These are not pieces worth reupholstering - and often the construction makes reupholstery not even possible.
And please don’t get me started on some of the e-commerce sites selling furniture. Buyer beware. So many of these clearinghouse type sites do not vet their sellers AT ALL. There are things being sold from stolen manufacturers photos that are complete schlock knock-offs. And even the knock-offs aren’t that cheap because getting them here from overseas now costs waaaaay more than making them. So sometimes you are essentially paying for the extended cruise your furniture took, instead of the value of the product!
All that said, I am a huge advocate of buying quality and, if possible, buying local, and not filling the world with more unnecessary disposable trash.
I realize not everyone is able to spend the $5000 or more it currently costs for a high quality sofa, even though it will outlast your car.
There are creative ways to get high quality items less expensively, but price shopping for look-alike new products is not one of them.
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