Buying furniture seems like a fairly straightfoward process. You go into the store, pick something you like, pay for it, and get it delivered to your home or take it back yourself. Sounds easy enough, right? But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that may make the process just a little more complicated than it sounds in theory. Prices usually aren’t fixed across all furniture stores, even for the same exact item. And what you see on the showroom floor may not be available to take home the same day, or even for several days. Getting a piece of furniture into your home from the store is actually the last part of a long journey involving many variables. And it doesn’t necessarily end there- if your furniture breaks and is covered by a warranty, the relationship is prolonged.
Furniture shops usually do not make their own furniture, but instead act as distribution centers for manufacturers. In the case of Ashley Furniture, Ashley sells the furniture to privately owned Ashley Home Stores. The individual owners of these stores decide what merchanidise to carry and how much of it to keep in stock based on customer demand. If you see a bedroom set that you like in such a store and purchase it, you could have it delivered to you the next day if it’s in stock. But if not, you have to wait until it can be ordered from a production or storage center, which usually takes only two days with Ashley. In other stores like Kmart and Walmart, it may take weeks to get an out of stock item due to a different system of getting stock.
Because stores like Ashley Home Stores purchase their furniture from the Ashley Furniture Company, it’s up to individual store owners to set prices. That’s why you’ll see different prices in different stores. For this reason, it’s wise to shop around- you might end up saving yourself a lot of money in a store that has a certain item priced lower.
Photo by pausimausi **Courtesy of sxc.hu
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