Dr. Sofa

[drcollie]

Recently a customer of mine took delivery of a Leathercraft Sectional in NYC. Despite best attempts at measuring ahead of time, it would not fit into the apartment elevator on the day of delivery. The long piece of the sectional was simply too long. As you might imagine, this gets everyone pretty excited at 3 p.m on a winter day when a $ 8,000 sectional is sitting on the sidewalk and no one knows what to do with it.

Jeff's Simplicity Sofa Co focuses its entire marketing theory on selling pieces that come apart for this very reason, and there are apparently many buildings in NYC where pieces simply won't go in.

I remember hearing about Dr. Sofa, a company in NYC that specializes in solving these issues. They respond almost immediately, take the new sofa apart, cut it into pieces, then haul it upstairs and re-assemble Price is $ 469 for the service:

http://www.drsofa.com/

Out of viable options, the delivery crew exhausted, my customer called Dr. Sofa and had them come out. I asked him to take photos of the process, so I could see how they do it. They got there promptly (arriving in an old Ambulance - they have a sense of humor) and by 8 p.m. it was done. Here's some of the photos taken during the process, and my customer said he was very pleased with the result.

I'm pretty shocked by what I see. This is a SERIOUS take-apart of an expensive piece, and as you can probably imagine the warranty just went out the window.

A lot of my suppliers were curious to see these as well, so I emailed them to them. I've been after Hancock and Moore for years to give us something we could break down into segments for customers if needed, and until they saw this Leathercraft piece they never responded much to my request. Well, the good news is they called me up yesterday and said that they don't want to see a customer have to do this to a piece, so they would custom modify pieces to break down if needed (custom charges apply) so Dr. Sofa doesn't have to cut into the frames.

If you happen to live in a place where egress is difficult, be sure to measure or send photos of EVERYTHING. Your apartment doorway, the elevator, the outside door to the apt building entrance, etc. Applies to suburban homes with basements, too. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When in doubt, have the pieces made to come apart so you don't have to do this to your new purchase when it arrives. Its an added cost, and if you move you have to have them come back in and take it apart again....not to mention never-wracking, I'm sure!