Arhaus Furniture Pieces / Looking for H&M Comparable Items

[mrgreg1965]

Hi Duane & company,

After spending a few hours reading around here the past several days, I must say I am very impressed with your candidness and thoughtful answers. You definitely have the customer service piece in place most businesses can't even sniff!

My wife and I have been looking for a new sofa and chair combo for about 4 months.

We came across two pieces at Arhaus we really liked:

A Filmore Coffee Sofa
http://www.arhaus.com/furniture/livi...as/19795SABTC/

A Devlin Spice Chair
http://www.arhaus.com/furniture/livi...rs/30425COBMS/

Now, we are price sensitive like most folks, but my biggest concerns are in the customer service arena and the quality.

I contacted Arhaus to find out who makes these particular "Made in the USA" pieces and was told it is proprietary information. My reply was, "how do I know I am not getting KMart quality for an $1100 premium on the sofa". The reply I received was, "believe me..."

My question is two-fold: Is their quality as suspicious as I have been reading and are there similar H&M pieces that are available (as quality does not appear to be an issue with their products from the research I have done).

Also, are particular fabric patterns available across different furniture dealers?

Finally, how would a leather piece hold up to active little girls 4 & 7 and a cat without front claws (who occasionally hops up for a scratch on the head).

Thank you,

Greg

[simplyjeff]

Here are some websites you may want to check on before buying Arhaus furniture. These were found by searching "Arhaus reviews" on Google.

The overall impression I got was that the furniture displays and the sales people are excellent. On the other hand there were a substantial number of reviewers who raised the following issues:

1. Delivered products are sometimes different from display models.
2. Horrendous customer service when there is a problem.
3. Many comments from store employees who cite poor working conditions and dysfunctional management, although they do generally seem to like the furniture quality.

http://www.judysbook.com/cities/powe..._Furniture.htm

http://www.yelp.com/biz/arhaus-furniture-chicago Don't forget to check out the filtered reviews on Yelp. Despite Yelp's implication that these filtered reviews are "suspicious" my experience has taught me that Yelp's computer algorithm that filters these hasn't a clue about how to determine reality.

http://local.yahoo.com/info-41551765-arhaus-furniture-baltimore

Jeff Frank
Simplicity Sofas

Semi-disclaimer - Simplicity Sofas is a manufacturer of specialty mid-priced upholstered furniture designed exclusively for small rooms and smallentrance ways. It does not compete with Arhaus in any way.

[mrgreg1965]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the links and information. Much appreciated.

Awhile back, I had a meeting with a furniture retailer (who eventually went bankrupt) in our area to work on Online Reputation Management. My advice to the IT Manager on how to improve online reputation fell on deaf ears...except the part I advise him NOT to do...which was post fake positive reviews (as they always read/sound in the voice of an individual person across many positive reviews). After not hiring us, we noticed numerous positive reviews, all obviously phony, in the same voice!

[drcollie]

Arhaus is not known for delivering high quality products. There is junk made in the USA, too. I can assure you that no top-quality maker does private label for anyone that I know of, they only produce under their own nameplate.

Funny thing about reviews. We stayed at the Comfort Inn in Bellville, OH on our motorcycle trip. What a dump. Dirty, old, smelly, thread-bare / stained linens and mildew in the bathrooms, rust on many fixtures. Still $ 169 a night and booked solid because of the track event at Mid-Ohio. Yet go on Trip Advisor.com and there are glowing reviews of the place (recent, too) that were obviously made by employees or the franchise owner. They also say the restaurant (Amish Cooking) next door is fantastic and we found the food there was so bad that it reminded me of my high school cafeteria. Bet the hotel owners own the restaurant, too!

That's why I think reviews of ownership experience is the most important thing our members can post. Also of service levels, both pro and con. You can spot trends and weed out those that are too over-the-top and those that are purely negative as well to try to find middle ground before you buy.

[simplyjeff]

I see this issue from a different perspective. In general I completely agree with everything that is said here about being careful to watch out for phony reviews.

On the other hand my company practices what we call "extreme" customer service. One of the things we do is to contact every single customer the day after they receive their furniture to ask whether everything is OK or whether there are any problems that need to be addressed.

More than half our customers respond with overwhelmingly positive responses. Those who do have problems or complaints are taken care of promptly and in almost all cases will respond later with praise that surpasses even that of our customers who did not have any problems.

As a result we have hundreds of these very positive customer comments. Several customers have told us that we provided the best customer service they have ever experienced anywhere at any time. Of course many people who are not aware of our reputation and have never contacted us are very skeptical about these "glowing" reviews. The major public review sites such as Yelp.com, my3cents.com and rateitall.com won't even accept them any more.

As a result we find that it is often more effective to point at a different statistic. After 4 years and nearly 2000 sales Simplicity Sofas has never received a negative review.

I find that when I look at other company reviews I tend to browse quickly through the positives and look for the negatives. Any furniture company can get things right at least half the time without even trying. A review that says everything was great is really meaningless. The best reviews are the ones that talk about problems the customer experienced and how the company handled those problems.

Jeff Frank
Simplicity Sofas

[Danw99]

Arhaus is ok, it is decently made but not great, not up to the quality of H&M. The problem with Arhaus (like Pottery Barn) is that they sell mid-quality stuff for high end prices. It is just not worth what they charge for it when you can get real high-quality brands for about the same price.

[mrgreg1965]

Hi Jeff,

"Extreme" customer service is a great route to take to make sure your customer is delighted (as opposed to just satisfied) with their purchase and support.

When these people post reviews, it would be obvious that they are written in different "voices" so to speak. My concern comes from when low person on totem pole (newest hire or the intern) is given the task of writing phony reviews. Their sentence structure flows down the same path with an exact rhythm and cadence.

[drcollie]

Generally speaking, companies like Arhaus, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and the like set their stores in very costly, high rent locations that put huge numbers to the operating costs. In order to maintain margins and offer "reasonable" retails they simply cannot sell high quality goods because of overhead costs. So you pay more, get less in the product, but you get to shop in a nice mall location.

I desperately would like to move my store to Fairfax Commons where there happens to be an Arhaus. Rent cost for my store would be 3.5 times higher than it is now for same square footage (I checked!). That means each sofa I sell would need to be about $500 more in price than it is now to cover the overhead. Now I can no longer be as competitive on price and would lose sales to customers who aggressively price shop brands. Its easy to do once you have the maker, model number and cover, yes?

Most traditional furniture stores are not in high rent locations for that reason. Most that try to go into prime retail area fail because of overhead costs on shoppable brands. Notice that all those stores mentioned above are private label only? Why is that? Because you as the customer cannot price shop a private label!