Chinese furniture producers learning to adapt

I’d like to chime in on why the comments option was removed from posted news stories on Furniture/Today’s website. While some of Industry Veteran’s comments are interesting and valid, some could be taken more as mean-spirited and bitter. Still, they pale in comparison to the nasty personal attacks that used to be flung in anonymous comments at the bottom of some of our news stories.

It was wrong to let such cowardly attacks continue attached to stories as if they were all part of the same package deserving the same attention. The stories generally are researched, and, at the very least, filled with attribution — with real names of industry veterans willing to stand behind what they were saying about their businesses or the industry.

Blogs, generally, are opinion pieces, therefore comments are welcome here. But if they get abusive, you won’t see them up here for long.

You’d be surprised what a real name or telephone call to the writer can do to the tone of discussion. Many people think twice about harsh one-sided declarations when they have to sign their name on the dotted line. And that’s as it should be.

Again, thank you for your comments. Your remarks underscore the ongoing importance of continuing this discussion, ideally with many members of the industry weighing in and working toward solutions that strengthen the furniture category as a whole.

Additionally, I would also like to invite you to email/phone me for a one-on-one conversation. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts and ideas.

Wow.

Few will want to admit it but Industry Veteran, from deserving his own blog to his conclusions about reader comments, is SPOT ON. That was the best analysis I've read in FT in years. Bravo!

Well Cindy, it feels odd to me that instead of you, the blogger, taking up my challenges for you to research and blog about, you want me to write the blogs. Actually that might be more meaningful if I were given the access to write my own blog for FT.

In regards to your questions:

Question#1 How do you think manufacturers and designers should balance between the need to make a profit and the desire to create furniture that will become as iconic as McCobb or Bertoia designs?

Just the fact that you constructed this question in this fashion shows that you do not have a solid grasp of the history of our business over the past 60 years. It is the kind of question that today's manufacturer's management makes. It is a bogus question. Good design has always sold well. There is no choice between making a profit and the desire to create iconic furniture. This is a major prevailing myth amongst production and price driven manufacturers. Pick any iconic design you want to pick from a classic Chippendale designs to the Eames chair etc. and you will find that they all made profit for their manufacturers who were interested in creating new markets with completely new products rather than just following old markets whose products had been commoditized and consequently pushed into the downward price spiral.

Question #2:
And how does this new consumer, the group that does not buy "forever" furniture figure into the equation?

This is another mythological assumption used by manufacturers to avoid any consequential change in their business strategies. It is pure BS.
There have always been consumers that could not afford the best. However why assume that those consumers don't have taste? That is an erroneous assumption. Look at leaders like OXO and Philip Starck. OXO makes kitchen utensils that are very well designed, ergonomic and affordable. Starck makes and designs everything with good design even if it is a toilet bowl brush. His household designs sell very well. Why was the flash sale of Missoni clothing so incredibly successful for Target at very low prices?

Your so called, "new consumer group" has always been there. Our industry has miscalculated that they don't want good design because it no longer knows what good design is. In most cases it does not have to cost more to be good design. In the early 1960's after Heywood-Wakefield and Directional had led the way for affordable modern case goods, Paul Broyhill brought out the less expensive well designed Brasilia Collection as part of Broyhill Premier. Its success was legendary.
Sorry but your question is not based on a true consumer reality. The truth is: Give them good affordable design and they will buy it. But the industry is by and large only giving them borax design and poor quality. You cannot name one new iconic design that came out of the US furniture industry from the past 20 years--at any price level.

In over 35 years of owning my own retail business which was cutting edge in a conservative community, I never saw a well designed new look fail to sell. What I did see over and over as time progressed was that manufacturers became more an more reluctant to invest in product development and design as the companies' ownership went from entrepreneurial to corporate buy out ownership. This is why all the brand names under FBI today are simply distant echoes of their successful pasts. Who would ever have believed that a company like Henredon was would not have its own president? Certainly not the three founders who made it an iconic company.

Please ask Ray to leave your blog on the front page for more than a day or two so more people will see it and have a chance to add their opinion. It feels to me that this sudden move to drop blogs much faster than in the past to back pages is because someone does not like the commentary readers are allowed to add. It was not that long ago that FT disallowed comments on most of its news articles. Reader commentary on FT articles should be re-instated. I can only assume that management was unhappy when advertisers complained about the comments from readers. Such gag orders do not help our industry crawl out of the 20th century into the second decade of the 21st century.

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate your input.

Since your responding name is Industry Veteran, I welcome your thoughts on the topics you mentioned. How do you think manufacturers and designers should balance between the need to make a profit and the desire to create furniture that will become as iconic as McCobb or Bertoia designs?

And how does this new consumer, the group that does not buy "forever" furniture figure into the equation?

As an industry veteran, you no doubt have years of experience and have been thinking about these topics for a long time. I think that there is infinite value in members of the industry -- who have been involved with all of these subjects -- sharing their ideas and thoughts about how the furniture industry can be improved and strengthened from the "inside." Thanks again for your reply.

It would even be nicer if what is left of the US furniture industry learned to step out of the past, adjust, create new products with new venues of sales and adapt to bring manufacturing back to the US. Many of us have been to China and understand its current story. This is hardly new information.

It might be more beneficial to wrote some blogs on why the US companies that are left are so averse to change and have no interest in redefining what furniture is and can be. Why are the players left totally production and price driven rather than product and design driven? Why do we have Paula Deens and Kathy Irelands instead of Paul McCobb's and Bertoia's. What can you blog about that will result in stimulating real change? There is too much tar on the heels of your blogging mind.

Relevant Topics for future blogs:
Why is there almost no creativity left in our industry within our own country?

Whatever happened to good old fashioned Yankee Ingenuity (perhaps a pun intended)?

Why did good modern design for residential disappear when almost all furniture manufacturing migrated south of the Mason Dixon line?

Why do southern upholstery manufacturers still believe in the myth that better upholstery should be built with 8 way hand tied coils?