Re: Major Confusion Over Density and Firmness Numbers
The reason that spec is not published is consumers almost never ask for it. I get a single request for cushion height maybe once a decade, it's not really relevant to 99.9% of all customers.
There is such a thing as too much data, and I agree with the H&M decision to limit published specs. The Price H&M Book is 175 pages long with over 1,400 items in it. If you bog down the price book with too much data it would be 350 pages long and then it gets difficult to use. Century Furniture (parent company of H&M) puts too much data in their price books, and it's a chore to use them because there is too much coming off the page. A customer on the phone expects me to be able to price an item for them in 30 seconds or less, I can do that with Hancock and Moore. I get into a Century price book and it may take three times as long to get a price, because theirs is so complex. If you take a minute and a half to look up a price you appear incompetent to the customer and they lose confidence in your ability to know what you are talking about.
I can get that spec of course, but it requires making a phone call to Hancock and Moore, and will usually take a day to get the information back as it has to go over to Production and they have to pull the plans. It's like buying a car and wanting to know the wheel offsets. The information is available, but most people it doesn't affect their buying decision as long as the wheels look good and fit in the fenders, they're happy.
Quite honestly, it's a mistake to try to buy furniture on specifications, as they have little to do with how a piece actually feels and sits. The suspension on the deck and pitch angles affect the comfort far more than cushion core density or cushion height. And no, I don't have specs on pitch angles or a spring count in the deck, or tensile strength of the metal support bands or tenison /makeup of the webbing. Again, those are once a decade kind of questions.
Buying a new sofa or chair is as much the design as it is the comfort. Find a design you like and trust it will sit well. If you don't have that trust, then you should go to a showroom and try out the pieces, they tend to sit the same across a premium maker's lineup. When H&M makes a new piece (and I have seen this in person) they will usually make between three and six handmade prototypes. Each generation goes before management for them to try out and they keep tweaking it until it sits well and looks nice. All the prototypes go into the dumpster until they finalize a design, and that becomes the production piece. The same management group signs off on it, which is why the items tend to all sit well. They sweat a lot of details at H&M, which is why its the line I like to distant ship, because it usually meets or exceeds customers expectations. Lesser lines of furniture are less apt to be fussed over as much during prototype, so they can be more of a crap shoot to distance buy.
Duane Collie
Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
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