Scrolling for Home: Navigating the Furniture Industry in 21st Century america
Over the last decade American society has experienced an unprecedented boom in the related markets of home furnishings, interior design and DIY renovation. More broadly known as the furniture industry, it’s one of the largest consumer markets in the United States at $244 billion, and it’s expected to skyrocket to $295 billion by 2028. But with everything that’s out there–from ‘fast furniture’ stores like IKEA and Rooms-to-Go, to DIY Youtube channels and HGTV shows, to the seemingly endless world of online home decor shopping–navigating one of America’s fastest growing cultural trends can be a daunting task at times. This is especially true in a post-Covid era, where the image of home is nearer and dearer to most of us than ever before.
This post is the first in a series of posts that aims to unpack, analyze, and offer solutions to some of the most important issues facing the American furniture industry in the 21st century. While the intended audience for this series is anyone who has purchased or thought about purchasing furniture in America over the last two decades, it is more realistically geared towards those most interested in the complex and fascinating world of furnishing and design and how it affects the objects we put in our homes. The remainder of this post will introduce the future topics in this series and briefly talk about what makes them interesting and important.
Bassett Furniture: the Battle Against Outsourcing and Offshoring
This post takes a closer look at how 20th century outsourcing and offshoring practices continue to affect the furniture industry today. For the first half of the 20th century, the Bassett Furniture Company was the world’s biggest manufacturer of wood furniture. Owned and locally operated by a single family in Bassett, Virginia, the company was also an economic and community center of life. But when the first tides of Asian competition began rolling in during the 1980s, Bassett, like so many other furniture companies, was forced to send its production overseas. Today, it’s not just furniture manufacturers who have to juggle the pros and cons of their product getting made outside of America–consumers have to navigate this reality as well. Quality, delivery times, and patent law are only a few of the factors that dictate whether or not your dining table says “Made in America.”
2. Segways, Sneakers, and Soirees: Behind the Scenes at High Point Furniture Market
The High Point Market is the biggest home furnishings and decor trade show in the world, boasting more than 11 million square feet of showroom space and nearly 2,000 exhibitors spread out across 180 buildings. Holding two week-long shows each year in the Spring and the Fall, the Market attracts between 70,000 and 80,000 attendees, including interior designers, manufacturers, architects, and celebrities. In other words, it’s a proverbial who’s-who of the furniture industry. ‘Going to Market,’ as it’s often called, is considered a rite of passage among home decor connoisseurs, a pilgrimage to the Furniture Capital of the World. Like with any major event, what makes the Market interesting is the nitty-gritty of what goes on behind the scenes.
This post chronicles a week at High Point Market from the perspective of a furniture maker who’s exhibited his work at the event three times. From futuristic scenes of besuited designers zipping through the streets on Segways, holding wine in one hand and an event map in the other, to social media buzz about this year’s must-wear Louis Vuitton Rivoli sneaker, to the exhausting lineup of happy hours and networking events, High Point Market is a microcosm steroid of what the furniture world views as its newest trends. It’s a surreal and phantasmagorical trip down the rabbit hole and into Furnitureland. Like a weekend in Vegas, but where the slot machines are replaced with expensive sideboards. And it’ll change the way you see home design forever.
3. Honing Your Hygge: ‘Fast Furniture’ vs. ‘Slow Furniture’
Starting in the early 2000s, "fast fashion" became a prominent business model in America. It refers to the mode of duplicating recent trends and high-fashion designs, mass-producing them at a low cost, and bringing them to retail quickly while demand is at its highest. The catch: because fast fashion items are made to wear out or break after a short time, consumers get stuck in a loop of constantly replacing objects. Fast furniture is the latest fad to follow this trend, and it refers to furniture mainly sold at big box stores like Target, Walmart and IKEA. It refers to furniture that’s cheaply made and even faster to break. The business model is the same: “produce the cheapest furniture possible that will break and force the consumer to buy from them again.”
This post offers ‘slow furniture’ as an alternative to the sweeping trend of ‘fast furniture’. Using the Danish concept of hygge (a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being), ‘slow furniture’ is defined as a lifestyle choice that entails the deliberate and careful curation of one’s home through the consumption of well-made furniture pieces.
4. Spotting Poorly Made Furniture
As the old adage goes, the devil is in the details. This saying has perhaps never been as true as it is when considered in the context of furniture production. This post provides a set of guidelines to follow when considering whether a piece of furniture is well-made or not. The skill of spotting poorly made furniture is crucial in today’s rapidly-growing home decor market, and can help save consumers hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars.
The starting point for learning how to spot poorly made furniture begins with undoing the common misconception that furniture in previous generations was simply better. Quality furniture exists today, and low-grade furniture existed in our grandparents’ generation. While it is true that the explosion of ‘fast furniture’ in recent decades has led to a higher quantity of poorly made pieces, the fact is that the furniture industry has always had its fair share of manufacturers that cut corners and practice bad fabrication techniques. This post discusses the basic history of good joinery techniques, the signs of quality wood finishes, and the evolution of hardware in order to provide a more accessible picture of what differentiates poor-quality from well-made furniture.
5. What is Amish Furniture and Why is It Important to America?
Since at least the 1960s, Amish furniture has been recognized and coveted in American culture as the antithesis of mass-produced furniture. Prized as much for its pristine selection of wood species like cherry and quarter-sawn white oak as it is for its usage of the highest quality joinery techniques like hand-cut dovetails, authentic Amish furniture continues to be viewed by many Americans as the zenith of fine furniture. But what exactly is Amish furniture? And how is it different from the two design styles it so often uses, Shaker and Mission Style? And finally, in what ways does Amish furniture fit into the past, present, and future of the American furniture industry? This post aims to answer those questions by taking a deeper look into the defining characteristics of Amish furniture and how they fit into ideas of quality and authenticity that go into furniture consumption today.
6. Be-Your-Own Designer: Augmented Reality and the Future of Furniture Design
One of the newest and fastest growing trends in the furniture industry is the usage of 3D augmented reality. Cylindo, one of the leading platforms for 3D product visualizations states, “The e-commerce boom catalyzed by the pandemic has forced furniture businesses to prioritize engaging online shopping experiences.” Through the use of a mobile device, consumers use AR to overlay the real world with virtual elements, allowing them to create a mood board of home furnishings that’s custom-fit to exact spaces in their home.
One outcome of the rise of AR in the furniture industry is that it has empowered consumers by giving them a more dynamic role in the interior design process. This post considers what the rise in AR could mean for the future of furniture design. If consumers are able to quickly and effectively create and visualize multiple idea boards for their space on their own, what does this mean for interior designers, furniture designers, and fabricators? Most importantly, how can AR be used to enrich the designer-client experience and enhance the quality of furniture design?
photo by UNIBOA
