8 ms·

I've posted about our ~$2000 West Elm sofa that disintegrated within 2 years in a similar previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399 https:/

I've posted about our ~$2000 West Elm sofa that disintegrated within 2 years in a similar previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399 The whole thing is just stapled together OSB. I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then: https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 (wish I'd gotten a few more pictures, but I was tired by this point). Just shocking how terrible the construction is.

nerdponx 3y ago
As if it wasn't bad enough that most consumer goods have completely bifurcated into "junk" and "luxury", now it's hard to even tell which products fall into which category, because there is so much junk now being sold as luxury.
- angry_moose 3y ago
  Yeah. Even at the time we knew West Elm wasn't high end, but we were at least expecting decent. We know more now (and could afford better) whenever we have to finally replace this, but $2000 is a not-insignificant investment that shouldn't be a complete piece of crap.
  - elteto 3y ago
    My problem is that I don’t even know where to buy _good_ stuff. I don’t want to pay $5k for a couch, but maybe I will _once_ in N years, for some large N, if I know it’s very well made and I like the design. But I have no idea where to go for this. The overlap between junk and luxury is too large nowadays.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      As with so many goods these days, I find that buying stuff made at least a couple of decades ago works best. It's much easier to tell the garbage from the treasure if you aren't buying stuff made recently.
    - earleybird 3y ago
      As sibling comment says: survivorship bias as a heuristic is useful.
      - layer8 3y ago
        It's often not, because today's company is not the same as it was 10-20 years ago. The longer you want something to last, the less reliable past experience becomes.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - drchickensalad 3y ago
      Aggregated reddit searches are amazing. Leads you to the gold mine that is american leather etc, which are often rebranded to more well known brands on a model by model basis. Lots of insiders on reddit with that info too.
      - beAbU 3y ago
        Maybey cynicism broke me but I find it impossible to trust recommendations from Reddit. It's too easy for these companies to pay for astroturfing these days. I've noticed a very prevalent "hail corporate" subculture on reddit that put me off believing anything anyone said.
    - pfannkuchen 3y ago
      I’ve had a consistently good experience with room and board so far and I am very anal about construction quality (as perceived by myself, anyway, I’m not a furniture expert).
    - nijave 3y ago
      I've had decent success with reddit r/BuyItForLife. Seems like mostly good recommendations and not too much shilling/advertising.
      - porkbeer 3y ago
        Bifl was taken over by advertisers years ago. I would not trust anything peddled there without a lot of research.
  - strictnein 3y ago
    West Elm's quality has definitely dropped the last 10 years. It's still not a bad place to get things like side tables, but I definitely wouldn't buy any furniture there any more, which is too bad. We had gotten a couple of nice pieces there in the past, although they're now gone. For quality modern furniture, the only game in town around me is Room & Board. The last couch we bought there was ~$6k[0]. It's a lot, but we'd honestly been eyeing it for almost 20 years and it'll likely be something we have for another 20 years or more. https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-loveseats/macalester-leather-sofas https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese...
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  It’s even worse with carpet and carpet install. Thieves.
  - throwaway14356 3y ago
    beds are the worse
- amluto 3y ago
  I’ve had multiple fancy chairs, purchased from a famous high end brand with a very high end showroom in a very high end design center, fail very quickly. The failure was due to their vendor (fancy, in France) using nice solid finger jointed hardwood, well finished, in a place where that construction was completely inappropriate. High quality Scandinavian-style plywood probably would have lasted decades. Nice materials + pretty design does not necessarily result in a good product.
  - plugin-baby 3y ago
    Where is hardwood inappropriate? Genuinely curious to know
    - gspencley 3y ago
      I don't think that amluto is saying that the hardwood itself is inappropriate, or is necessarily ever inappropriate. I think they are saying that the specific joinery in their example was form over function, to the point where the joint was a critical point of failure. Having done a bit of woodworking as a hobby, I would say that hardwood could be inappropriate if it is used for an element that is purely structural, internal (and thus will be hidden by external features) and there are cheaper alternatives that are just as good, or stronger materials available and we are talking about a critical structural element. That's a pretty abstract answer but it's always going to depend on the specific project. Sometimes a piece of furniture has no hidden internal structure, or the appeal of the furniture is that it is all bare wood and you want it made entirely out of a beautiful "furniture grade" hardwood. For certain upholstered furniture, such as many sofas, using expensive materials for inner framing could not only be superfluous and add unnecessary cost to the piece, but in certain circumstances there may be better materials available even if you could make a perfectly adequate structural support that will last a lifetime using expensive hardwood and the right joinery for critical stress points. I read amulto's point as being "expensive material and fancy joinery doesn't matter if you have a weak design."
    - amluto 3y ago
      The chairs had four legs, each of which radiated out horizontally from a central point (they were swivel chairs) then turned downward to the floor. The legs were about 1/2” wide, maybe a bit more. They were maybe 1” tall (vertically in the horizontal section and horizontally in the vertical section). So the grain needed to run horizontally in the horizontal part to support the bending load. It was probably best for the grain to be vertical in the vertical part, although that was maybe less critical: that section was mostly in compression. It probably also looked better that way. In any case, the actual construction put a finger joint in the horizontal section just past the turn, so a tiny bit of vertical grain wood extended horizontally over the turn. And several of the legs cracked just along the side of the finger joint, and one failed completely after about a month of gentle use. The design plausibly could have worked if the joint went diagonally through the turn or was below it. But plywood is strong along both in-plane axes, and the legs could likely have been cut in single pieces from sheets of plywood with strength to spare. Attractive plywood, even from hardwood species, is readily available. The plies are visible along the cut edge, but this is actually a style people like, especially in Scandinavian furniture. Even IKEA sells some nice chairs with plywood elements, at entirely reasonably price points.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >junk now being sold as luxury. That's always been the case though. There has always been junk marketing itself as "luxury" to milk the nouveau riche. It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. It's not like the brick that Supreme sold was made of some sort of magical clay. The luxury purse companies don't burn their leftover product to protect some secret of Dr Who purses that are bigger or magically organized on the inside, but because the entire value of the brand is "I can afford this and you cannot" Luxury has ALWAYS been about signalling and displaying status and power. It's always about rubbing the prole's faces in their supposed supremacy. Remember, they have money because they are better than you, definitely not because there are systems and structures in place that make it easier to get rich for the already wealthy and connected. Unfortunately it seems so many people really struggle to understand that while quality often costs a lot, costing a lot does not imply quality in any way. If you can afford to spend oodles on marketing for your product, you probably aren't spending as much on quality as people assume you would.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    This is why I differentiate between "quality" and "luxury". Luxury goods are very often just expensive junk that people buy in order to signal that they have money. Quality goods are well-designed, well-made, etc. And you can't be sure about quality based on price.
  - nemothekid 3y ago
    >It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. Not sure why Coach was chosen for this example - I don't believe they are expensive; last I checked they were in the range of $200-500, which doesn't seem egregious as the actual luxury brands (ex. Hermes, where the entry level bags are $4,000). That said, I feel there is a real difference in quality at various price points, and focusing on the material ("magic leather") is wrong. When I'm paying a premium I'm usually looking for in the dimensions of construction, and usually that means paying an actual professional who may charge $100/hr, vs 19 year old in Bangladesh. The two might be using the same material but the price difference comes from the person assembling the item. The problem is you have a ton of companies (even "luxury" ones), that in an attempt to juice their stock price, have also focused on getting costs super low and are now using the same factories as junk brands but just slapping their logo on it. Even products of the same brand can vary wildly in quality depending even on the year it was made. I have jackets from "luxury" brands that I bought 10 years ago that still look brand new for thousands of dollars (and probably saved money in the long run), but buying a similar item new or even trying to replace it is impossible.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  I recently visited Hong Kong. In a mall I spotted a shop called Sinéquanone (sic). It was flogging "French fashion", quite pricy "French fashion". Who knows, it might be French inspired. You can tell its authentic French thanks to the e acute and the trailing e! Sine qua non is Latin. To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Who could forget the Rolls Royce Silver Mist? Mist in German means dung, manure or shit. Someone thankfully noticed before it was released (Frankfurt motor show) and it became the Silver Shadow. Then there was "Consignia" ...
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. When I lived in Hong Kong, I once saw a boutique grocery store that had a wooden hanging-sign/plaque, and IIRC it was 1997 and the sign said "Since 1996." Far more amusing were the businesses non-ironically translated as things like "1000 Golden Fortune"-something-or-other.
    - gerdesj 3y ago
      "1000 Golden Fortune" or Jolly good luck ... something. I think that's fair enough - translation of idioms is very hard when the languages are so far apart. There's quite a lot of history involved too so that I suspect there are routine translations between the various Chinese languages eg Cantonese and Mandarin to English which might be a bit behind the times but they still work despite sounding a bit twee nowadays to the relevant ears. I say: "viva la difference".
  - baud147258 3y ago
    > Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Here in France, the daftest I've seen is the Audi e-tron, with etron meaning turd... Though it's been out of common use, so Audi just left the name as is.
    - martopix 3y ago
      I remember an app that was a calculator where you could pen-in your calculations, so it was called Ink-ulator. They later changed the name profusely apologizing to Italian users.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  Luxury does not have to be premium or vice versa. Premium conveys quality, luxury conveys status.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Luxury implies comfort or quality.
    - eightysixfour 3y ago
      Quality is not necessary for a good to be a luxury good. Only for demand to go up disproportionately with increases in income. Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status. Consider Range Rover or Jaguar, which are known for being low quality but luxury brands. Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality. Consider a Toyota vs a Kia. These things are often correlated but don’t have to be.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        >Only for demand to go up disproportionately with increases in income Okay, if we want to limit ourselves to economics jargon rather than vernacular. >Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status No, practically it means poor people aren't buying them much. Only some luxury good purchasing is related to status signaling. >Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality I'm not aware of a context where that would be the standard definition, though in some contexts it may be the excess portion of the price.
        eightysixfour 3y ago
        I don’t know what to tell you for you to believe me but premium relating to quality and luxury relating to status are literally the way they’re defined in the retail goods and brand world. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-luxury-productsand-what-means https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-lu... https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-key-differences-47986d4c01eb https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-k... https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison Or, if you want to listen to techies talk about it, listen to this episode of Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh
- m463 3y ago
  the one that gets me (not furniture, but consumer good) is Yeti. they seem to be slightly better made, but for SO MUCH more money. They have huge stores devoted to their products. Are people really spending money, and that much, on coolers?
  - Solvency 3y ago
    if you're a wealthy kid going to a beach bbq with your wealthy friends, yes. you signal to others your class through products like yeti. replace your entire question with Apple and you'll see the answer as a pattern.
  - strictnein 3y ago
    We have a couple of Yeti coolers. They work really well, but they're heavy and have significantly less space inside than you'd expect by looking at them. Most importantly though, they look cool and have nice shiny and colorful exteriors.
pyb 3y ago
West Elm has a bit of a reputation in that regard
- some-guy 3y ago
  I don't live in the Bay Area anymore, but once great thing about living there was the amount of secondhand West Elm / Williams Sonoma furniture for reasonable prices that you could buy from rich people. Most of their quality is a crapshoot but at the right price you can find good deals for some of their items.
schneems 3y ago
About 8 or so years ago my wife and I were really excited to buy our first “adult” piece of furniture (read, not-ikea). And we found a leather sofa we loved the look of at West Elm. But it really sucked. Thankfully we had another room that needed to be furnished and we threw it in there. But the thing was just not comfortable and the pillows started sagging after minimal use. Since then almost every other couch we got was from ikea, since if it ended up sucking at least we didn’t pay 2-3x the cost for it. Which is sad really, I want a nice couch. I just don’t that paying 10-20x the cost wind just be a piece of junk.
- imp0cat 3y ago
  IKEA has some interesting options (cheap copies of designer sofas/other stuff). Here's a quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE It's almost like a "How to shop for nice stuff at IKEA 101" and covers: 00:22 Sofas 01:28 Morning Brew 02:29 Lounge Chairs 03:41 Dining Chairs 05:34 Tables 07:34 Lighting 09:02 Others
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  > read, not-ikea At least with most IKEA products you assemble them yourself, so the level of quality is immediately apparent, and the pricing reflects it. I appreciate that straightforward approach. Most everything I've bought there has outlasted my desire to keep using it. There are the occasional problems, like a blue table where the veneer shows a bright white mark wherever it gets nicked, but I feel like many criticisms are unfounded and often come across as elitist.
Arrath 3y ago
I'm considering doing exactly this kind of surgery on my couch, how hard was it to put the fabric cover back together?
- angry_moose 3y ago
  The only part I had to rip off was the bottom dust cover. Installing new is pretty cheap and easy - $10 roll and a staple gun. Or just leave it off
  - Arrath 3y ago
    Hmm I don't know if coming in from the bottom will get me the access I need, I'm afraid. I've got some bowing across the middle of the backrest. But, maybe I'll give it a go anyway! Thanks.
brandensilva 3y ago
West elm has been pretty bad for most stuff for us too. Surprisingly we have an okay Urban couch from them that's held up well the last 5 years. The cushions haven't maintained their shape all that much and the feathers occasionally poke through which are my only complaints. Our little kids used to jump on it before we moved it downstairs so the frame was at least built well and it's still pretty comfortable. Id never buy one again from them though after having everything else fail on us.
jwells89 3y ago
The quality of the frame makes a big difference. About 3 years ago after moving into a new house, I needed a new couch and wanted something that would wear reasonably well without getting into the higher end ($3k+). I found one on Apt2B which they were touting was built around an robotically-welded steel frame, lending to consistent durability. After reading many sofa reviews mentioning buckling particleboard, that sounded pretty good. There weren’t a ton of options due to pandemic shortages so I went for it, which cost me $1500. It’s held up well so far. Cushions are showing some wear but nothing out of the ordinary, and the steel frame is indeed solid. It might even be worth reulphostering at some point down the road.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
I would expect the seller to fix that. Furniture at that price should last much longer. Don't you have any concept of 'merchantable quality' in the US?
unethical_ban 3y ago
Eesh... I have a West Elm couch I got at an outlet for half off, so only $1200. It's fairly comfy and looks good, but I feel the back cushions will need to be restuffed sooner rather than later. I've had it less than a year.
turtlebits 3y ago
If you want longevity, don't buy "fast fashion" furniture like West Elm, Pier One, Wayfair, HomeGoods and even IKEA.

nerdponx 3y ago

As if it wasn't bad enough that most consumer goods have completely bifurcated into "junk" and "luxury", now it's hard to even tell which products fall into which category, because there is so much junk now being sold as luxury.

angry_moose 3y ago
Yeah. Even at the time we knew West Elm wasn't high end, but we were at least expecting decent. We know more now (and could afford better) whenever we have to finally replace this, but $2000 is a not-insignificant investment that shouldn't be a complete piece of crap.
- elteto 3y ago
  My problem is that I don’t even know where to buy _good_ stuff. I don’t want to pay $5k for a couch, but maybe I will _once_ in N years, for some large N, if I know it’s very well made and I like the design. But I have no idea where to go for this. The overlap between junk and luxury is too large nowadays.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    As with so many goods these days, I find that buying stuff made at least a couple of decades ago works best. It's much easier to tell the garbage from the treasure if you aren't buying stuff made recently.
  - earleybird 3y ago
    As sibling comment says: survivorship bias as a heuristic is useful.
    - layer8 3y ago
      It's often not, because today's company is not the same as it was 10-20 years ago. The longer you want something to last, the less reliable past experience becomes.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - drchickensalad 3y ago
    Aggregated reddit searches are amazing. Leads you to the gold mine that is american leather etc, which are often rebranded to more well known brands on a model by model basis. Lots of insiders on reddit with that info too.
    - beAbU 3y ago
      Maybey cynicism broke me but I find it impossible to trust recommendations from Reddit. It's too easy for these companies to pay for astroturfing these days. I've noticed a very prevalent "hail corporate" subculture on reddit that put me off believing anything anyone said.
  - pfannkuchen 3y ago
    I’ve had a consistently good experience with room and board so far and I am very anal about construction quality (as perceived by myself, anyway, I’m not a furniture expert).
  - nijave 3y ago
    I've had decent success with reddit r/BuyItForLife. Seems like mostly good recommendations and not too much shilling/advertising.
    - porkbeer 3y ago
      Bifl was taken over by advertisers years ago. I would not trust anything peddled there without a lot of research.
- strictnein 3y ago
  West Elm's quality has definitely dropped the last 10 years. It's still not a bad place to get things like side tables, but I definitely wouldn't buy any furniture there any more, which is too bad. We had gotten a couple of nice pieces there in the past, although they're now gone. For quality modern furniture, the only game in town around me is Room & Board. The last couch we bought there was ~$6k[0]. It's a lot, but we'd honestly been eyeing it for almost 20 years and it'll likely be something we have for another 20 years or more. https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-loveseats/macalester-leather-sofas https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese...
theGnuMe 3y ago
It’s even worse with carpet and carpet install. Thieves.
- throwaway14356 3y ago
  beds are the worse
amluto 3y ago
I’ve had multiple fancy chairs, purchased from a famous high end brand with a very high end showroom in a very high end design center, fail very quickly. The failure was due to their vendor (fancy, in France) using nice solid finger jointed hardwood, well finished, in a place where that construction was completely inappropriate. High quality Scandinavian-style plywood probably would have lasted decades. Nice materials + pretty design does not necessarily result in a good product.
- plugin-baby 3y ago
  Where is hardwood inappropriate? Genuinely curious to know
  - gspencley 3y ago
    I don't think that amluto is saying that the hardwood itself is inappropriate, or is necessarily ever inappropriate. I think they are saying that the specific joinery in their example was form over function, to the point where the joint was a critical point of failure. Having done a bit of woodworking as a hobby, I would say that hardwood could be inappropriate if it is used for an element that is purely structural, internal (and thus will be hidden by external features) and there are cheaper alternatives that are just as good, or stronger materials available and we are talking about a critical structural element. That's a pretty abstract answer but it's always going to depend on the specific project. Sometimes a piece of furniture has no hidden internal structure, or the appeal of the furniture is that it is all bare wood and you want it made entirely out of a beautiful "furniture grade" hardwood. For certain upholstered furniture, such as many sofas, using expensive materials for inner framing could not only be superfluous and add unnecessary cost to the piece, but in certain circumstances there may be better materials available even if you could make a perfectly adequate structural support that will last a lifetime using expensive hardwood and the right joinery for critical stress points. I read amulto's point as being "expensive material and fancy joinery doesn't matter if you have a weak design."
  - amluto 3y ago
    The chairs had four legs, each of which radiated out horizontally from a central point (they were swivel chairs) then turned downward to the floor. The legs were about 1/2” wide, maybe a bit more. They were maybe 1” tall (vertically in the horizontal section and horizontally in the vertical section). So the grain needed to run horizontally in the horizontal part to support the bending load. It was probably best for the grain to be vertical in the vertical part, although that was maybe less critical: that section was mostly in compression. It probably also looked better that way. In any case, the actual construction put a finger joint in the horizontal section just past the turn, so a tiny bit of vertical grain wood extended horizontally over the turn. And several of the legs cracked just along the side of the finger joint, and one failed completely after about a month of gentle use. The design plausibly could have worked if the joint went diagonally through the turn or was below it. But plywood is strong along both in-plane axes, and the legs could likely have been cut in single pieces from sheets of plywood with strength to spare. Attractive plywood, even from hardwood species, is readily available. The plies are visible along the cut edge, but this is actually a style people like, especially in Scandinavian furniture. Even IKEA sells some nice chairs with plywood elements, at entirely reasonably price points.
mrguyorama 3y ago
>junk now being sold as luxury. That's always been the case though. There has always been junk marketing itself as "luxury" to milk the nouveau riche. It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. It's not like the brick that Supreme sold was made of some sort of magical clay. The luxury purse companies don't burn their leftover product to protect some secret of Dr Who purses that are bigger or magically organized on the inside, but because the entire value of the brand is "I can afford this and you cannot" Luxury has ALWAYS been about signalling and displaying status and power. It's always about rubbing the prole's faces in their supposed supremacy. Remember, they have money because they are better than you, definitely not because there are systems and structures in place that make it easier to get rich for the already wealthy and connected. Unfortunately it seems so many people really struggle to understand that while quality often costs a lot, costing a lot does not imply quality in any way. If you can afford to spend oodles on marketing for your product, you probably aren't spending as much on quality as people assume you would.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  This is why I differentiate between "quality" and "luxury". Luxury goods are very often just expensive junk that people buy in order to signal that they have money. Quality goods are well-designed, well-made, etc. And you can't be sure about quality based on price.
- nemothekid 3y ago
  >It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. Not sure why Coach was chosen for this example - I don't believe they are expensive; last I checked they were in the range of $200-500, which doesn't seem egregious as the actual luxury brands (ex. Hermes, where the entry level bags are $4,000). That said, I feel there is a real difference in quality at various price points, and focusing on the material ("magic leather") is wrong. When I'm paying a premium I'm usually looking for in the dimensions of construction, and usually that means paying an actual professional who may charge $100/hr, vs 19 year old in Bangladesh. The two might be using the same material but the price difference comes from the person assembling the item. The problem is you have a ton of companies (even "luxury" ones), that in an attempt to juice their stock price, have also focused on getting costs super low and are now using the same factories as junk brands but just slapping their logo on it. Even products of the same brand can vary wildly in quality depending even on the year it was made. I have jackets from "luxury" brands that I bought 10 years ago that still look brand new for thousands of dollars (and probably saved money in the long run), but buying a similar item new or even trying to replace it is impossible.
gerdesj 3y ago
I recently visited Hong Kong. In a mall I spotted a shop called Sinéquanone (sic). It was flogging "French fashion", quite pricy "French fashion". Who knows, it might be French inspired. You can tell its authentic French thanks to the e acute and the trailing e! Sine qua non is Latin. To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Who could forget the Rolls Royce Silver Mist? Mist in German means dung, manure or shit. Someone thankfully noticed before it was released (Frankfurt motor show) and it became the Silver Shadow. Then there was "Consignia" ...
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. When I lived in Hong Kong, I once saw a boutique grocery store that had a wooden hanging-sign/plaque, and IIRC it was 1997 and the sign said "Since 1996." Far more amusing were the businesses non-ironically translated as things like "1000 Golden Fortune"-something-or-other.
  - gerdesj 3y ago
    "1000 Golden Fortune" or Jolly good luck ... something. I think that's fair enough - translation of idioms is very hard when the languages are so far apart. There's quite a lot of history involved too so that I suspect there are routine translations between the various Chinese languages eg Cantonese and Mandarin to English which might be a bit behind the times but they still work despite sounding a bit twee nowadays to the relevant ears. I say: "viva la difference".
- baud147258 3y ago
  > Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Here in France, the daftest I've seen is the Audi e-tron, with etron meaning turd... Though it's been out of common use, so Audi just left the name as is.
  - martopix 3y ago
    I remember an app that was a calculator where you could pen-in your calculations, so it was called Ink-ulator. They later changed the name profusely apologizing to Italian users.
eightysixfour 3y ago
Luxury does not have to be premium or vice versa. Premium conveys quality, luxury conveys status.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Luxury implies comfort or quality.
  - eightysixfour 3y ago
    Quality is not necessary for a good to be a luxury good. Only for demand to go up disproportionately with increases in income. Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status. Consider Range Rover or Jaguar, which are known for being low quality but luxury brands. Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality. Consider a Toyota vs a Kia. These things are often correlated but don’t have to be.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      >Only for demand to go up disproportionately with increases in income Okay, if we want to limit ourselves to economics jargon rather than vernacular. >Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status No, practically it means poor people aren't buying them much. Only some luxury good purchasing is related to status signaling. >Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality I'm not aware of a context where that would be the standard definition, though in some contexts it may be the excess portion of the price.
      - eightysixfour 3y ago
        I don’t know what to tell you for you to believe me but premium relating to quality and luxury relating to status are literally the way they’re defined in the retail goods and brand world. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-luxury-productsand-what-means https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-lu... https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-key-differences-47986d4c01eb https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-k... https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison Or, if you want to listen to techies talk about it, listen to this episode of Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh
m463 3y ago
the one that gets me (not furniture, but consumer good) is Yeti. they seem to be slightly better made, but for SO MUCH more money. They have huge stores devoted to their products. Are people really spending money, and that much, on coolers?
- Solvency 3y ago
  if you're a wealthy kid going to a beach bbq with your wealthy friends, yes. you signal to others your class through products like yeti. replace your entire question with Apple and you'll see the answer as a pattern.
- strictnein 3y ago
  We have a couple of Yeti coolers. They work really well, but they're heavy and have significantly less space inside than you'd expect by looking at them. Most importantly though, they look cool and have nice shiny and colorful exteriors.

pyb 3y ago

West Elm has a bit of a reputation in that regard

some-guy 3y ago
I don't live in the Bay Area anymore, but once great thing about living there was the amount of secondhand West Elm / Williams Sonoma furniture for reasonable prices that you could buy from rich people. Most of their quality is a crapshoot but at the right price you can find good deals for some of their items.

schneems 3y ago

About 8 or so years ago my wife and I were really excited to buy our first “adult” piece of furniture (read, not-ikea). And we found a leather sofa we loved the look of at West Elm. But it really sucked. Thankfully we had another room that needed to be furnished and we threw it in there. But the thing was just not comfortable and the pillows started sagging after minimal use. Since then almost every other couch we got was from ikea, since if it ended up sucking at least we didn’t pay 2-3x the cost for it. Which is sad really, I want a nice couch. I just don’t that paying 10-20x the cost wind just be a piece of junk.

imp0cat 3y ago
IKEA has some interesting options (cheap copies of designer sofas/other stuff). Here's a quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE It's almost like a "How to shop for nice stuff at IKEA 101" and covers: 00:22 Sofas 01:28 Morning Brew 02:29 Lounge Chairs 03:41 Dining Chairs 05:34 Tables 07:34 Lighting 09:02 Others
MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
> read, not-ikea At least with most IKEA products you assemble them yourself, so the level of quality is immediately apparent, and the pricing reflects it. I appreciate that straightforward approach. Most everything I've bought there has outlasted my desire to keep using it. There are the occasional problems, like a blue table where the veneer shows a bright white mark wherever it gets nicked, but I feel like many criticisms are unfounded and often come across as elitist.

Arrath 3y ago

I'm considering doing exactly this kind of surgery on my couch, how hard was it to put the fabric cover back together?

angry_moose 3y ago
The only part I had to rip off was the bottom dust cover. Installing new is pretty cheap and easy - $10 roll and a staple gun. Or just leave it off
- Arrath 3y ago
  Hmm I don't know if coming in from the bottom will get me the access I need, I'm afraid. I've got some bowing across the middle of the backrest. But, maybe I'll give it a go anyway! Thanks.

brandensilva 3y ago

West elm has been pretty bad for most stuff for us too. Surprisingly we have an okay Urban couch from them that's held up well the last 5 years. The cushions haven't maintained their shape all that much and the feathers occasionally poke through which are my only complaints. Our little kids used to jump on it before we moved it downstairs so the frame was at least built well and it's still pretty comfortable. Id never buy one again from them though after having everything else fail on us.

jwells89 3y ago

The quality of the frame makes a big difference. About 3 years ago after moving into a new house, I needed a new couch and wanted something that would wear reasonably well without getting into the higher end ($3k+). I found one on Apt2B which they were touting was built around an robotically-welded steel frame, lending to consistent durability. After reading many sofa reviews mentioning buckling particleboard, that sounded pretty good. There weren’t a ton of options due to pandemic shortages so I went for it, which cost me $1500. It’s held up well so far. Cushions are showing some wear but nothing out of the ordinary, and the steel frame is indeed solid. It might even be worth reulphostering at some point down the road.

kwhitefoot 3y ago

I would expect the seller to fix that. Furniture at that price should last much longer. Don't you have any concept of 'merchantable quality' in the US?

unethical_ban 3y ago

Eesh... I have a West Elm couch I got at an outlet for half off, so only $1200. It's fairly comfy and looks good, but I feel the back cushions will need to be restuffed sooner rather than later. I've had it less than a year.

turtlebits 3y ago

If you want longevity, don't buy "fast fashion" furniture like West Elm, Pier One, Wayfair, HomeGoods and even IKEA.