Why they bought Chinese fabrics
By Carole Sloan -- Furniture Today, March 10, 2002
In the past few weeks I've been talking with fabric retailers across the country about business, what's selling and what they see happening. These are folks who typically have personal relationships with their customers; few are big-time, multi-unit entrepreneurs.
And the interesting thing is that in these conversations a five-letter word was heard over and over.
The word? China!
We all know about American furniture companies that are having product made in China. We also know about American companies that are having fabric produced and covers cut and sewn there and shipped here to be applied to a frame. And we also know about some of the early-on fabric importers who have focused on how low is low in pricing.
For the latter group, it is a dog-eat-dog situation. The formerly lowest-price producer now is being beset by another company perfectly willing to buy its way into the American market. And quality for some of these players is a sometime thing.
But what we're hearing now is a new version of the China scenario. It's one that mixes the basic price advantage of low-cost production with what American customers — not consumers — are calling parity product.
As one retailer said in a private aside, "If it were a dollar or a dollar-and-a-half difference, on a quality-to-quality basis, we would have bought American. What we bought was on a quality-to-quality basis and 40% less."
Wow!
What seems to be happening is that some Americans and Europeans are teaming up with the Chinese to produce high-quality, well-designed — often knocked-off American designs — fabrics and bringing them in at substantial savings.
This can only further devalue the market in all segments of home furnishings.
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