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Hello all,
At IrisFurniture.com we have recently acquired several great new lines including some outstanding 5th grade Italian leather sofas, sofa sets, and sectionals, some great dining room pieces, and we are in the process of adding in some beautiful new outdoor patio sets that we just finalized. As a thank you to fellow forum members, you can use the coupon code WGFREE at checkout for a free upgrade to white glove delivery service. If anyone has any questions or requests, don't hesitate to contact me directly.


Best Regards,
Jim
IRIS Furniture
http://www.irisfurniture.com

Hi Jim,

People on this website are very serious about furniture. Many of them wonder how it is that retailers like you are able to offer all the furniture on your website at 50% - 70% off all the time. Some of them even suspect that you might be making up the "Average" prices that you list for comparison. When there are so many sleazy furniture retailers doing things like that it gives lots of people the idea that all furniture dealers are dishonest.

I am sure you are not one of those "sleazy" retailers and would have no problem justifying your "Average" prices if someone asked you to do that. You could easily name a few of your competitors who offer the same furniture at those "Average" prices. Right?

Hi Jeff,
Thank you for your reply. You bring up a great point. There are many furniture retailers out there (online and otherwise) that do inflate their suggested retail prices just to discount with no justification for how they can sell at a lower price. In fact, retailers aren't the only ones employing this tactic. It is pretty common knowledge that manufacturers in many industries list grossly inflated MSRP so that their retailers can say they are offering their customers a discount. Unlike these methods, our pricing comes from a truly unique supply chain and business model. Unlike 90% of online retailers, we are not a drop shipper. We negotiate arrangement directly with various furniture factories, and in many cases these are exclusive arrangements. When a customer orders one of our products, that product is custom produced specifically for that order. This allows us to pass a significant cost savings on to our customers for the following reasons:

1) We are not required to maintain expensive warehousing and showroom infrastructure
2) We do not have costly excess inventory to worry about
3) We do not purchase our products from a distributor (who also take a margin)
4) In many cases we negotiate exclusive distribution rights to our product lines. This gives us extraordinary leverage in price negotiations.
5) We have unheard of freight and logistics pricing. Without going into too many proprietary details, lets just say that we pay just slightly more to have a sofa delivered from CA to NY than IKEA charges to deliver it across town.

In terms of the average retail pricing listed, with many of our products these prices are calculated as a fair estimate based on build quality and materials. For example, our leather furniture is all 5th grade top grain Italian leather. For our sofa sets and sectionals specifically, I think if anything our average retail prices are conservative to a fault. Most of the retailers I have compared to are charging well over $3,000.00 for a lower grade sofa set. But, If you find a product that you don't agree with the average retail price listed, certainly feel free to bring it to my attention and I will be more than happy to look into it and make adjustments as needed. If you have any other questions, just let me know!


Thanks,
Jim

Jim,

Thanks for your reply. I must admit I did not spend much time on your website prior to writing my previous email. It is extremely difficult to tell the difference in quality between a $799 sofa and a $3000 sofa strictly from small, low resolution photos. After reading your reply I took a more careful look at your your website and I have to admit that there are many items that do look to be excellent values.

This brings me to another question. Why is there absolutely no information on your website about where you are located, how big the company is or how long you have been in business? There is not even a telephone number or an traceable email address to contact you. These are easy things to include on your website if you are a legitimate company. Without that information I would never recommend that anybody take a chance on ordering from you. If there was a problem how would anyone contact you?

This lack of information occurs throughout the website. When IKEA first came to the U.S. one of the innovations they introduced which was truly revolutionary at the time was their concept of detailed explanations of how their furniture was constructed. They went into great detail about their low pressure laminates, plastic drawer glides, and other inexpensive materials that were used in their furniture -- and their customers loved being told about how this cheap furniture was made. Details like this are even more important for furniture dealers selling high quality products. For example, your Giada leather sofa is offered for $799 (including free shipping coast to coast) with an Average Retail Price listed as $1900. You give a few details about construction such as Italian 5th grade leather. I don't know what that means. How much cheaper would the sofa have been if the manufacturer used a 1st grade leather?

The frame is made of kiln-dried hardwood. That is fairly standard language in the furniture industry, but it does not clearly explain how the piece is built. For example, poplar is considered to be a "hardwood," yet it is far lighter and has nowhere near the strength of a frame made out of maple or oak or hickory. In addition many manufacturers take the position that "hardwood plywood" is synonymous with "hardwood." I am guessing that an H&M sofa built to similar dimensions would probably weigh close to 250 lbs. while an Ashley sofa would weigh closer to 150 lbs. I would love to know how much your sofas weigh.

The description of the cushions for the Giada leather sofa is as vague as it is possible to be. Ultra-plush soft comfortable cushioned seating could mean anything or nothing. For a $799 sofa you could use a cheap polyurethane foam built up with a couple of inches of polyester fiber and it will feel very "Ultra-plush and soft" for several months before the cushions collapse. The identical Ultra-plush soft comfortable cushioned seating description could also be used on a high quality spring-down cushion that would be fully compatible with a $3000 sofa. Once again these are details you could easily include on your website so that your customers would know what it is you are selling.

I am also very intrigued by your statement that you can ship your furniture from New York to California for the same cost as a local IKEA delivery. As a manufacturer who ships all over the country to individual consumers I am very aware of shipping prices. To get a shipping cost from New York to California of less than $200 you would have to be as big as IKEA with multi-truckloads leaving your warehouse every day. Even at a cost of $200 this means that you are actually selling this $1900 sofa for only $599. The rest goes to the shipping company. That sounds like an awfully thin profit margin for a $1900 sofa.

You stated that you don't have a warehouse or showroom and do not buy from distributors. Also you are not a manufacturer and do not drop ship. I have to confess that I am completely unable to figure out how you get the furniture from your supplier to your customers without using one of these options or how you coordinate shipments from multiple manufacturers through a single shipper who is giving you rates that are better than IKEA.

In this time of political conventions I do not want to forget that you completely ignored my question of whether you could provide the names of other retailers who offer these products at higher prices. Your response was an excellent example of the political rhetoric that has become an art form in the recent election campaign. Your response sounded very reasonable unless someone takes the time to dissect it to discover that there are no "facts" that can be checked. Politicians repeat their "non-answers" over and over until the interviewer forgets what the original question was or has to break for a commercial. They get away with it all the time. I wonder how they would do in the furniture industry?

I have done a little research on IRISfurniture and haven't come up with much. The IP address 24.118.86.57 comes out of St.Paul MN, however the domain name was just registered this year out of Chesterbrook PA with the owner name of "oneanddone". Additionally the IP address is coming up as a blocked address on (5) spam reporting services, and the website for IRISfurniture does not list a physical address for a showroom or contact point, a viable phone number, or location of their operation.

Based on the information above, I would recommend no one on the forum make a purchase from Irisfurniture until "Jim" can explain the inconsistencies above. Smells like spam to me.

Duane




domain: IRISFURNITURE.COM created: 24-Apr-2012 last-changed: 04-May-2012 registration-expiration: 24-Apr-2013 nserver: ns1.volusion.com 209.216.96.11 nserver: ns2.volusion.com 69.36.95.4 nserver: ns3.volusion.com 209.216.96.11 nserver: ns4.volusion.com 69.36.95.4 status: CLIENT-TRANSFER-PROHIBITED registrant-firstname: Oneandone registrant-lastname: Private Registration registrant-organization: 1&1 Internet, Inc. - http://1and1.com/contact registrant-street1: 701 Lee Road, Suite 300 registrant-street2: ATTN: irisfurniture.com registrant-pcode: 19087 registrant-state: PA registrant-city: Chesterbrook registrant-ccode: US registrant-phone: +1.8772064254 registrant-email: proxy3389815@1and1-private-registration.com

Hi Jeff,
I appreciate your recognition of the value we offer our customers with our products. I am extremely thankful that you pointed out that our business phone number and contact info was not easy to locate on the site. We recently underwent a major site design overhaul and it appears as though the "Contact Us" link was mistakenly changed to a link to automatically email our customer service department as opposed to listing the various ways customers can contact us. This has since been remedied. Also, we run a virtual office business model, so our employees are located in various places. Our distribution center is located in CA, although we didn't think this information was pertinent to the average consumer. We are available to be contacted via phone, email, and our live chat support directly on the site. We are highly dedicated to customer support before and after a purchase.

Regarding your inquiry to technical specifications on our products, this was done by design. I personally believe that the average consumer is not as interested in detailed technical specifications as someone with an industry background may be. We created our product listings to focus on benefits, as opposed to technical features. This may change or evolve over time, however for now that is our business model for a number of reasons. That being said, if a customer has more advanced technical questions on any of our products, they can certainly email us for more specific information. If we see recurring questions, we will add additional information to the product listings. To date, however, this has not been our experience.

Our logistics and freight, are indeed very complicated. This is a hallmark of our business model and the difficulty of implementing our logistics and freight is a main factor in the uniqueness of our business model. We do indeed aggregate shipments from multiple suppliers through a single shipper. Volume comes into play with one aspect of our logistics, but also we have been grandfathered into a an extremely aggressive flat rate service that includes final mile services.

While I appreciate your concern over our purportedly "thin" profit margins, our profit margins are our own. We do have certain items that are loss leaders for current and future advertising purposes, though I don't think profit margins or loss leaders are anything consumers concern themselves with. Amazon.com for example operates on what I would call an EXTREMELY thin profit margin for tangible goods (a much higher margin on virtual goods helps them stay around the 26% GPM mark overall), and they seem to be doing fairly well. I don't think consumers are concerning themselves with margins, but rather with the value that the company brings to the table for the end user.

Also, I did not "ignore" your question regarding listing other retailers selling the same or similar products. I addressed it delicately. If you are familiar with the industry (as it seems you are), then I am sure you are familiar with the fact that many manufacturers impose MAP pricing guidelines. A big part of our business model revolves around negotiating no MAP pricing. Often this requires un-branding and unique product identifiers. I think anyone with Google can likely do their own research to find acceptable comparables if they wish, however I am not in a position to point to specific retailers. As I'm sure you can understand, this could threaten our agreements with our suppliers.

Your motives for being so critical of our offering are unclear to me. If you are simply looking for clarification in the spirit of consumer advocacy, then I commend you and am more than happy to answer any and all questions you or any actual consumers may have. That being said, I don't think your smarmy comment comparing my delicate answers to your questions regarding our proprietary business workings to a politician are warranted. Also, I can hardly provide a blanket answer to specific construction materials when we have multiple manufacturers represented in our product offering. As I previously stated, for more advanced construction and technical specifications our sales department is available via phone, email, or live chat support. If we do not have the information, we will get it.


Best Regards,
Jim

Hi Duane,
I sent you a PM, but will also reply here for the benefit of the community. I apologize for the lack of contact information readily able to be found on the site. As I explained to Jeff in my previous post, we recently underwent a major site design overhaul and the "contact us" link was mistakenly turned into a hyperlink to email customer service. This was corrected the moment it was pointed out. We are available to be reached via phone, email, or our live chat support on our site. 1and1 is the domain registrar that handles our domain management. They are located in PA. Similar to how your domain registrar is GoDaddy. We outsource the domain technical work through them, that is why their PA address is listed on our domain registration page. This is fairly common practice. We run a virtual office business. Our employees are located in various places and our business model does not require a "showroom", so we do not have a physical office address. As previously stated, our distribution center is located in California. The IP address you logged is the IP address of my personal home office computer, and I certainly have a hard time believing that my home office is listed on any "spam reporting websites". Could that have more to do with my personal ISP (Comcast)? We currently have done NO email marketing at all.

UPDATE: I think I figured out where you are getting your "spam reporting services" information. I see that from inputting my IP address into Blacklistmaster.com returns those 5 results. This is not legitimate. Try typing in your own IP address and see if you return any results. You will. I just checked several IP addresses of visitors to our store, and ALL of them returned results. There are many spam listing services that include non spam IP addresses because it benefits them when selling their lists. You can research this yourself.

I will say that I wish you would have brought these concerns to me privately before posting them publicly, considering that you personally PM'd me inviting me to post in this section and we subsequently created a special offer for forum members. More than a little disconcerting :/


Best Regards,
Jim

Jim, you are new here and do not understand that for the past four years this forum has been constantly bombarded by spammers and fly-by-night operations. It's a full time job keeping them off the forum. As owner of this forum I have a duty to the members to cull out these kind of operators so none of our members fall prey to them. Forums overrun by shady sellers quickly lose their legitimacy and member base.

Your operation has no physical address or showroom, or even a contact phone number or fax. You exist only as a virtual presence on the Internet, operating out of a home via email, I'm guessing. There have been many come here like that before, and there will be many after you leave. It's a regular thing.

I will advise any forum member to not purchase from a merchant that is not forthcoming with a physical address and a viable contact phone number at the very least. How you choose to run your business is up to you of course - but if you want staying power and legitimacy you need to do better.

This thread is now closed and there will be no further comments to it.