In the consumer age, so one is led to believe, only a fool pays retail.
Maybe, and maybe not. Buying furniture for one’s home is an expensive proposition, with individual pieces sometimes costing hundreds of dollars or more, and everyone looks for bargains.
There are other ways of purchasing items than going to a department store and paying top dollar, but those ways are not for everyone.
Bargain-hunting takes time and energy as well as some knowledge since anyone can buy cheap and get poor quality but only the skillful can get something good for less.
There are a few avenues worth trying if it is understood that there are drawbacks to every seemingly foolproof plan.
Let’s start with buying used furniture and antiques:
– Estate auctions. Auction houses are good places to try for objects of all sorts, and estate auctions represent the liquidation of all the furniture and possessions someone had in a home. They are on the block usually because that person died, and the heirs need to sell things to pay an inheritance tax. Because of this “distressed sale” (as it is called), prices are often lower than if the objects were to be sold off individually and at a more leisurely pace.
Michael Grogan, president of Grogan & Co. auction house in Boston, claimed that half of his audience is dealers while other auctioneers see the figure closer to 75 percent. As these dealers plan to sell what they buy at marked-up prices, the possibility is great that one may be able to purchase an item for less than at a used furniture or antique shop.
The disadvantages are in the risks. “It can be very intimidating to compete with dealers,” Grogan said, adding that the excitement of bidding leads some novices to “buy on impulse or spend more than they really intended.” All items are also sold “as is,” and one needs to know how to judge whether a piece is well-constructed.
Not all auction houses are alike. Some set up a tent for a day in one town, then move on, while others are established in an area and have a reputation for weeding out poor quality or fake items.
It is also wise to check with an antiques dealer or museum curator about which auction houses have good reputations and to attend one or more auctions before buying anything to see how they work. One should also attend an auction viewing, usually held a day or so before the auction itself, to look over the objects that will be sold.
Potential bidders might also want to ask the auction staff questions about individual pieces, including what they think something is worth. One can learn from what the staff says, and if they don’t know, that may tell a potential buyer something, too.
– Liquidators. Things happen. Companies move, restaurants go out of business, a fire or flood damages a warehouse, someone goes bankrupt. Liquidators, who can be found in the Yellow Pages under “Liquidators” or “Salvage and Surplus,” are called in to dispose of things at 10 cents (or so) on the dollar. There are also liquidators operating through the Web, including American Surplus Liquidators (www.usgovernment.com/index1.htm) and Estate Liquidators (www.estatecash.com).
Some of them send out lists of what they currently have on hand to those who call, and they all have warehouses where one can nose around for something good. One might also keep an eye out for going-out-of-business signs or restaurant closings and make some deal with the owner directly. This is a right-spot-at-the-right-time sort of thing.
The advantages are, again, the ability to pay much less for things one needs.
The disadvantages depend on where and what one buys. “The kinds of restaurants that go in and out of business a lot are in the lower end and won’t have comfortable chairs,” said Michael Wiener, an interior designer in New York City. The furniture may have had some rough usage as well, with drink and cigarette stains and, perhaps, some nicks.
– Manufacturers’ outlets. Manufacturers’ outlets exist all over, but they are not always easy to find. One needs to know who the manufacturers are to begin with.
There are, however, numerous books on where outlets are located (including “Factory Outlets of New England,” “International Consumers’ Yellow Pages,” “Shop New York by Mail,” “Discount America,” “Buying Retail is Stupid” and “The SOS Directory”), though this information may become dated quickly. Check the publication date. Through the Internet, one also may try Outlet Zoo (www.Outletzoo.com) and Prime Retail (www.Primeretail.com), among others.
The advantages are that by shopping at outlets, one can save between 30 and 50 percent.
The disadvantages are that you are not shopping at a department store. There are fewer salespeople to answer questions, and those on the floor are generally not as knowledgeable as their counterparts at a regular store. A buyer has to be his or her own judge of quality and workmanship. Delivery also must be contracted separately with someone else (the outlet sales force probably can offer the names and telephone numbers of nearby truckers).
Martin Elinoff, a past national president of the American Society of Interior Designers, noted that outlet merchandise is often “bottom-of-the-line goods. They could be fixed-up seconds or they might have been refused by the first customer. They might have been water-marked in a flood or smoke damaged in a fire. They might be discontinued items, and why were they discontinued? They might be fine, but there’s no one in an outlet to stand behind them.”
– Trans-shippers. The mail-order version of the manufacturers’ outlets, trans-shippers often advertise in newspapers and magazines (such as Better Homes & Gardens and House Beautiful), and one can order specific pieces from them, saving between 10 and 15 percent off the retail price. The Web has a variety of trans-shippers, including Furniture.com (www.furniture.com), Furniture Shoppers (www.furniture shoppers.com), Furniture Today (www.furnituretoday.com) and Design Concepts Unlimited’s Contemporary Furniture (www.dcuinc.com/homfur.html).
On the Web or off, money is paid upfront, and pieces that come damaged become one’s own headache. Furniture.com (www.furniture.com), an on-line seller of new furniture, offers customers 90 days of interest-deferred and payment-free financing on all purchases of $300 or more. Plus, Furniture.com has a 30-day money-back customer satisfaction guarantee with no shipping, return or restocking charges (this paragraph as published has been corrected in this text).
– Other ideas. Interior decorators can be expensive, but they also provide better pieces than can often be found at department stores because manufacturers produce both a road line (for stores) and a showroom line of custom-made pieces for professionals, such as decorators.
“Interior designers get better quality pieces for no more money than department store pieces, plus we get them at wholesale prices,” Michael Wiener said.
The average fee for a decorator is 35 percent above the cost of the furniture–that may, in certain circumstances, equal the department store retail prices–and, of course, the homeowner has saved a lot of do-it-yourself time.
A somewhat quirky, but certainly time-saving, way to buy new furniture often for a bit less than department stores is shopping through catalogs. One of the largest operations of this sort is Decorating Den, which, through its more than 1,000 nationwide franchises, sends out a salesperson (Fuller Brush style) to one’s home with upholstery samples and photographs of the furniture.
Craft shows and stores are another place, not necessarily to save money but to get more value for one’s dollar. Each piece is individually handmade with real wood, for instance, instead of the pressed board used in much factory-produced furniture.
The cost may be higher, but the pieces will last forever.
