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Thread: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

  1. #21
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    Duane,

    My samples for Sonoma & Nubuck came in today & was very pleasantly surprised to also find a sample for the CC nail heads tucked into the envelope: thank you very much for adding that

    My initial reactions:
    Nubuck is to die for!! Lol, I just want to keeping rubbing that little swatch, it's so deliciously smooth & soft. Nubuck Camel is right on the money as far as the desired color goes too.

    The Sonoma swatches smell wonderful; like a leather jacket, or the inside of a new designer handbag. They're velvety soft too, but have a considerably more nubby texture to them than the Nubuck. Now I'm in a pickle: if I go with the Parisian, I'd ideally like it as close to the original as possible, & Chanel had her sofa upholstered in a very light camel/tan suede.

    If you had to offer your expert opinion for doing an entire sofa in either of these hides: what is it?

    Nubuck isn't nubby at all, despite its name. I feel like it'd be easier to "slide" in & out of than the Sonoma. But, the Sonoma's are authentic to the original. And, if my end goal in going with the Parisian is to own a sofa as close to the original Coco Chanel sofa as possible, in addition to having always loved her unique take on the classic roll arm, AND it'd be used by me alone as MY personal lounging/watching tv/chilling out on sofa(no kids & 2 very well behaved pets,) is it worth it to go for a less functional daily use hide for the sake of achieving authenticity, style, & comfort(I'm 5'9" btw?)

    I like the Sonoma suedes, & have no doubt they'd feel amazing curling up on: luxuriously velvety soft, like a cashmere sweater; there's just a bit more friction from the nubby texture when running my hand over it.

    Oh, I don't know if you saw this either in an updated quote, or as a reply to another post, but going off of H&M's site, I was unaware the CC nail head was silver/pewter toned. It looked brass in color to me, thus my choosing it.

    It really only works with the Sonoma Fawn as that color has quite a bit of grey in it to really work with the CC. I'd actually prefer either the standard nail head trim photographed on the Parisian online, or that nail's equivalent in a more antiqued brass tone. Again, just going off the pics on H&M's site; it's very difficult to get any real sense of nail color & size. I'm thinking this must happen constantly: sending out thousands of nail samples that are instantly ruled out once they're seen in person, simply because many ppl's only source of reference is the website.

    I understand it's an extremely expensive & time consuming undertaking for H&M to update their site into a more modern, interactive site. But, maybe even suggesting adding a "rendering tool" where prospective buyers could use a base frame to virtually try out different leathers, welts, gimps & nail head trims would be so helpful. AND, it wouldn't require them having to have a photo uploaded of every frame in every leather, etc.

    Just use the City Sofa & allow the user to click on any leather or fabric & the picture would render what that choice would look like. Preferably with a detailed zoom in option too.

    At the end of the day, I think it'd actually save them money for their bottom line, as well as minimize waste generated from sending out what must amount to thousands of samples that are instantly ruled out, then trashed.

    Lol, just a thought I'd throw out there. Most of the big box stores have this feature on their websites & it's an immeasurable tool. These little CC nail heads could've been put to better use had I actually been able to see their true color & size on a frame online. Just using my particular experience with this 1 set of nails & multiply that across the board, everyday, with everyone else making the same assumptions/mistakes...etc, etc. Haha, you can see where I'm going with this.

    Ok sorry for going off topic & rambling on. Anyone else agree this would be an amazing tool to have on H&M's website?? Speak up & throw your votes in now: we just may be able to persuade Duane to run it by Jimmy Moore

    Once again, thank you so much for getting these swatches out to me so quickly. I can't imagine how little you must sleep between running this great forum & the store?!

    Grateful as always,
    Andrea
    Last edited by Asomer; 04-05-2016 at 02:20 AM.

  2. #22
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    <laughing> I stop answering emails and forum posts about midnight, and start up again about 7 a.m....

    Sonoma is a true suede and more coarse - made from the splits, Nubuck is a Top Grain pure aniline that is buffed down, so its a finer leather than a true suede however has limited colors. I am not a fan of either on a seating surface - you can't slide on either one and that's a real annoyance after a bit. We don't think about 'sliding' when in a sofa, but you do it every time you adjust your position, and most the time you don't even realize how much you do. However, I understand what you are going for in a look. My advice would be this - and it will cost you a bit of money to do it - go ahead and order it as you like, then buy an extra seat casing in the leather the main body is going to be in - assuming you are not doing the whole piece in a suede. That way you have them to fall back on and out of the same dye lot as the leather body in case you do tire of the suede or nubuck seat, or simply stain it to the point it needs to be replaced (both those leathers are very hard to clean).

    I have better photos of the H&M nails here on the forum as a sticky than the H&M website photo. Click my photo three times and you get a nice, hi-res photo.

    The software you speak of isn't going to happen - I've been beating that drum for almost two decades and they won't invest the money into that consumer web tool. Its expensive to do so, and would require a full time employee to keep up with all the frame and cover changes as well as frame adds and drops. THis is not a wealthy industry like many others. Margins are tight, and there is not much fat in it.
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

  3. #23
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    Quote Originally Posted by drcollie View Post
    <laughing> I stop answering emails and forum posts about midnight, and start up again about 7 a.m....

    Sonoma is a true suede and more coarse - made from the splits, Nubuck is a Top Grain pure aniline that is buffed down, so its a finer leather than a true suede however has limited colors. I am not a fan of either on a seating surface - you can't slide on either one and that's a real annoyance after a bit. We don't think about 'sliding' when in a sofa, but you do it every time you adjust your position, and most the time you don't even realize how much you do. However, I understand what you are going for in a look. My advice would be this - and it will cost you a bit of money to do it - go ahead and order it as you like, then buy an extra seat casing in the leather the main body is going to be in - assuming you are not doing the whole piece in a suede. That way you have them to fall back on and out of the same dye lot as the leather body in case you do tire of the suede or nubuck seat, or simply stain it to the point it needs to be replaced (both those leathers are very hard to clean).

    I have better photos of the H&M nails here on the forum as a sticky than the H&M website photo. Click my photo three times and you get a nice, hi-res photo.

    The software you speak of isn't going to happen - I've been beating that drum for almost two decades and they won't invest the money into that consumer web tool. Its expensive to do so, and would require a full time employee to keep up with all the frame and cover changes as well as frame adds and drops. THis is not a wealthy industry like many others. Margins are tight, and there is not much fat in it.
    Ooh yea, I figured if it's 2016 & their website is what it is with the limited photos & info, etc if they were to have some sort of rendering tool on there, it'd have already been done.

    Lol, like I said: I'm just brainstorming here on ideas. I'm assuming they've already crunched the cost/benefit analysis of doing that & it's actually cheaper for them to continue sending out samples(of anything,) as requested than allowing prospective buyers a tool to aide them in narrowing down their choices BEFORE requesting samples? I'm just thinking at the end of the day, it'd help their bottom line.

    And yep, you're right: I really only see that mind of advanced technology on the major retailer's sites & they've got the resources to do it.

  4. #24
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    There are two things I am directly responsible for on many of the web sites of the brands I sell. One is to actually put photos of samples on the web site so you could see a representation of the leather, fabric, wood finish and nail trim without going into a store. That took about five years of my constant badgering for them to do. The resistance was "Photos are not accurate, what if someone buys a piece based on the web photo and then complains and wants us to take it back?" My rebuttal was 'the photos are there to help them narrow their choices to ask for samples, not to order from." They relented mostly because I told them the internet was the future of shopping and they had to do it. Second was the dealer locator function, so you could find the dealer closest to the customer without going to the Yellow Pages. The objection there was people would have a tool to price shop one dealer against another, and I said "They're going to do that anyways, a dealer listings will just make it easier for them to find the stores closest to them." That took at least three years to implement. Today Google Search is so good that Yellow Pages are dead, but back in the day before Google, search engines were unreliable for things like dealership locators.

    What I have not been able to accomplish with pressure for better web sites: 1) Minimum door threshold requirements to get into the doors per piece, 2) weight of each piece, 3) sectional schematics with drawn dimensions 4) A Master Dealer designator, so that customers know which dealer in a region has a high presence in the line (40 to 50 pieces) vs the dealer that has 1 piece on the floor and an out-of-date swatch handle.

    This is an old school industry, they do not put money into technology. To check status on an order, or what leather of fabric is in-stock requires a phone call during the weekday.

    Orders are still done via Fax Machines!
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

  5. #25
    dmattinson Guest

    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    Quote Originally Posted by Jenny View Post
    Hi Duane,

    I saw this photo of a pottery barn sofa online today: ]

    I was just wondering, what happened to the leather that made is so loose and wrinkly, and how do you prevent that from happening?Click image for larger version. 

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    While not that bad, that is what a Mission style chair, loveseat and couch I purchased from Bassett looked like after 12 years of lighter use - the biggest users were the dogs who loved to lay on top of the back cushions. We used it on and off but not continuously over the years (and didn't do the best job of cleaning the leather and conditioning it) and it looked almost like that. Now, for a sofa, loveseat and chair, I paid in 2002 the equivalent of the cost a single sofa from H&M in Gr 3 leather in 2016 but the leather faded, stretched and the cushions lost their resiliency. We paid for their "top-tier" leather and it was anything but top-tier.

  6. #26
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    Mar 2016
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    Quote Originally Posted by drcollie View Post
    There are two things I am directly responsible for on many of the web sites of the brands I sell. One is to actually put photos of samples on the web site so you could see a representation of the leather, fabric, wood finish and nail trim without going into a store. That took about five years of my constant badgering for them to do. The resistance was "Photos are not accurate, what if someone buys a piece based on the web photo and then complains and wants us to take it back?" My rebuttal was 'the photos are there to help them narrow their choices to ask for samples, not to order from." They relented mostly because I told them the internet was the future of shopping and they had to do it. Second was the dealer locator function, so you could find the dealer closest to the customer without going to the Yellow Pages. The objection there was people would have a tool to price shop one dealer against another, and I said "They're going to do that anyways, a dealer listings will just make it easier for them to find the stores closest to them." That took at least three years to implement. Today Google Search is so good that Yellow Pages are dead, but back in the day before Google, search engines were unreliable for things like dealership locators.

    What I have not been able to accomplish with pressure for better web sites: 1) Minimum door threshold requirements to get into the doors per piece, 2) weight of each piece, 3) sectional schematics with drawn dimensions 4) A Master Dealer designator, so that customers know which dealer in a region has a high presence in the line (40 to 50 pieces) vs the dealer that has 1 piece on the floor and an out-of-date swatch handle.

    This is an old school industry, they do not put money into technology. To check status on an order, or what leather of fabric is in-stock requires a phone call during the weekday.

    Orders are still done via Fax Machines!
    Wait, you're saying, you have NOT been able to persuade them to add minimum threshold requirements for anything?! Why??

    I haven't really looked that deep into their site, but just figured they were on the tear sheets. I have noticed it's asked about quite a bit on the forum & wondered why aren't they just printing out a tear sheet? That SHOULD be standard info on a tear sheet, along with dimensions, etc. That's not difficult to add or all that time consuming for a somewhat major manufacturer.

    I'm not comparing H&M to RH at all: but, every furniture style(ex: Lancaster seating group) on the RH website has a "detailed info" PDF download accompanying it. It's just a basic Excel spreadsheet listing all the pieces in that specific group's lineup on the vertical axis & the piece's dimensions & their minimum threshold requirements on the horizontal axis. It's about as basic as it gets: no pictures or scaled drawings, etc...just a simple, little spreadsheet.

    H&M could & absolutely should add at least minimum threshold requirements on the tear sheets.

    The more a customer can reasonably narrow down their choices & options on their own before going round to all the retailers in their area to seek out that info, the better.

    It cuts down on dealers having to spend time answering the basics & would allow them to focus their energies on the actual selling of the item based on what the customer was able to rule out, narrow options down to, etc on their own.

    If I was a dealer, that'd prob be 1 of my biggest pet peeves: ppl coming into my store just to get basic info on an item only to realize it won't fit or work in their space.
    Last edited by Asomer; 04-06-2016 at 12:50 PM.

  7. #27
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    Quote Originally Posted by dmattinson View Post
    While not that bad, that is what a Mission style chair, loveseat and couch I purchased from Bassett looked like after 12 years of lighter use - the biggest users were the dogs who loved to lay on top of the back cushions. We used it on and off but not continuously over the years (and didn't do the best job of cleaning the leather and conditioning it) and it looked almost like that. Now, for a sofa, loveseat and chair, I paid in 2002 the equivalent of the cost a single sofa from H&M in Gr 3 leather in 2016 but the leather faded, stretched and the cushions lost their resiliency. We paid for their "top-tier" leather and it was anything but top-tier.
    From Bassett as well?

  8. #28
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    At the end of the day, all I can do is suggest. It's their company and their money to spend! Somethings take hold, others not so much.

    One thing I was able to do today was to convince Taylor King to begin a 5% off Sale Program like we did with Hancock and Moore in February. This will be a first, and I have a few more details to work out before its put in place, but expect that to happen next month.
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

  9. #29
    Jenny Guest

    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    Hi Duane,

    Another craigslist curiosity for you:



    What happened here to make that sofa so stained in the middle?

    Edit: Also, about those fat wrinkles.. whenever I see them, I think, "mhmm, that must be a yummy cow"
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  10. #30
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    Default Re: Leather Furniture and what you can - and cannot expect

    That's a nasty sofa....lots and lots of soiling and never cleaned. That one is ready for the landfill.
    Duane Collie
    Straight answers from thirty-six years in the business.
    My Private Messages are Disabled - Please ask questions here in the forum.

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