I am often asked about the “green” aspects of my upholstered furniture which I manufacture. This seems to be the current buzz running through the design community. Usually it is the latest trends or colors, but right now is the environmental “friendliness” of furniture. Well, following is my answer (in the short form!).
My new slogan: Quality is the new Green.
Suppose you purchased a product, which you used every day, and lasted for 40 plus years, and only needed a few replacement parts along the way; wouldn’t you consider that to be an amazing product? Now, let’s imagine that product was a sofa. Sofas only really perform a limited number of tasks. A sofa is placed in a space in order to offer options for one to sit or lounge or sleep upon. An added bonus, sometimes but not always, is that a sofa can make a room look pretty. So, how did we take this product and add a built-in planned obsolescence to it, if it only performs one task to begin with, and a replacement performs the same task? Well the home furnishings industry did it by turning a functional piece into a fashionable piece. The industry didn’t think about rain forests or oil rigs, or land fills. They wanted to create an industry based on obsolescence through design. The design community created the need for newer updated color and fashion trends. We had to have the newest version sofa upholstered in the newest colors and the newest patterns. Well, not everyone could afford to buy a new sofa every time a new color trend was launched. So, rather than be satisfied with a sofa in last years colors, the furniture industry began building cheaper furniture. And I mean cheap in both the cost and the construction. You can’t have one without the other. And thus was born: throw away furniture. I don’t think the design industry set out to do this, but I do believe it has become a detriment to the industry. Designers are always complaining about their clients constant questioning of the price of everything. Well, of course they would when they see advertising for sofas for $299, and a designer is trying to sell them a $4000 sofa. Is the client buying the newest and latest fashion sofa, or are they buying a piece of furniture which they will sit, lay or lounge upon? Ultimately, whatever the price of the furniture, whatever the fabric covering, whatever the color, the sofa will perform the same task: to offer seating options. The question then becomes, how well will the sofa perform this task, how long will the sofa perform this task. Given enough time of performance, are replacement parts available and at what cost?
Now, let’s apply this to the real world! I was recently contacted by someone looking for someone to reupholster her sofa. She asked if Cypress did reupholstering. I told her we did, and explained to her how we would check the frame for structural integrity and check the coils, inspect the foam, etc. She then asked me if I was familiar with a manufacturer named: Umphred’s. What a wonderful coincidence! (Cypress Furniture started out as Umphred’s Furniture! We still build our furniture with the same quality standards! Same frame construction and the same hand tied coil foundation and the same all solid hardwood construction.) This wonderful customer had purchased her Umphred’s sofa in 1963 for $459.00 at a furniture store in Oakland. 46 years! She had reupholstered it once already and had the cushions replaced at that time. So that sofa preformed the task of providing seating options for 46 years. Or, the frame cost her roughly $10 per year. Do you really think a sofa which you could by today for $299 is going to last 46 years? Do you even think it will last 2 years? Let’s take a well built sofa, and extend it out to 46 years at a cost of $4000. This equals about $87 per year. Compare that to a $299 sofa over 2 years: $149 per year. So it looks like the better value is the sofa which is better built! So, we are using our resources in a better way, in order to use less resources (which is what “green” is all about.), and coming up with a better valued product which performs the same task.
Okay, I can hear you all saying that you don’t want to keep your sofa for 46 years. Which is exactly why you buy a well built piece of quality furniture: you get it reupholstered. You can change the color, the type of fabric and the pattern. With a well made piece of furniture, you can even make changes to the frame. You can change the shape of the arm, add a skirt, or remove the skirt and have an exposed leg, you can raise the seating height, etc. But, what you haven’t done is throw away your old sofa and use more of our precious resources to build a new sofa. That is why you buy quality furniture!
