Bradington Young vs Hancock & Moore

One of the things that is interesting in operation a forum like this that has some degree of popularity, is that a number of people in the industry stop in from time to time to see what's being said but they don't participate in the forum. I'll then run into company executives from the brands we talk about here and they invariably ask me to 'write something nice' about their products. My reply is always "To have any validity, i have to write it as I see it. If you want glowing reviews, then build a better piece."

This leads me to the title of this post, because I frequently am asked almost daily to compare Bradington-Young vs. Hancock & Moore. My usual reply is they served different markets, and are not direct competitors in the same segment. H&M is a super-premium line that builds to the highest and best standard in the industry, B-Y is a premium line that builds to a specific price point targeting to come in 20% or so under the super premiums. So, knowing that - its not realistic to expect a piece costing an average 20 % less to have the same features as the upper tier piece. And they don't.

Now for an example:

This week a Bradington-Young sofa and a Hancock&Moore sofa arrived at my store. Both came in good shape, the leather covers on both were decent, they both sat well, but when I was loading them in the truck something about the B-Y really bothered me. A second look and was that the front legs were on crooked. Not hugely, but enough to catch my eye. Both were tilted in about 2 degrees from center. I rolled the sofa onto its back for further inspection. Sure enough, just as I had suspected, the B-Y legs were spin-on with a single threaded screw in the middle of the turning that mates to pressed-in receptacle in the sofa frame. Spin 'em on, and spin 'em off. No way to straighten them because the set receiver in the frame cannot be adjusted. They are what they are. The vast majority of customers would never see this, or pay it any mind, but you won't even see that on a Hancock and Moore sofa because their turned legs are properly joined into the frame the way real furniture should be. I've seen those metal inserts like they use on the BY frame for the legs fail and pop-out, and its a real pain to replace them and keep the screw-on leg in the right place. Been there, done that - more than once.

So when you are deciding of Brand X is worth more then Brand Y, be sure to look at all the features and see what the lower priced piece is costing you in terms of material, workmanship, joinery and other factors before you spend your hard-earned dollars. Don't expect a piece that costs 20 % less to perform at the same level in construction and quality, it just cannot do it. Pretty much the old adage "You get what you pay for" rings true.