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Originally Posted by
drcollie
Financing costs money, no way around that. You as the consumer are going to pay for it one way or another, either straight up or in the cost of the goods.
I used to run a Finance program through Synchrony Bank and only 3 months was "free" and no one wanted that. 12 months was costing me around 6% to run, and 18 months 12%. I don't have the profit margin in the price to absorb that so would have to tack it on as a surcharge which no one liked. Adding to that the fact Synchrony charged me $ 25 a month as maintenance, and it wasn't worth it My customers tend to be fairly well-off and would rather have a cash/check discount for the best possible price so I went to that model, as every credit card costs 3% to process. My credit card sales used to be 95% of all transactions - since I went to a cash discount model they are now reversed and less than 10% of all sales. Typically stores that are offering free financing are those that sell lower quality product that costs them very little tp buy with huge markups so they offer Free Financing, Free Delivery, etc., etc.
Everyone wants "Heirloom" quality pieces, but very few want to pay for them, which is why the people that made that sort of thing are all out of business for the most part. I see that every single day my store is open. "How much does the best one cost you say? $ 6,000? I can only spend $ 2,500". Yesterday alone I had three different customers who want Hancock and Moore pieces done in higher-end leathers but have the budget for a Chinese import. The wood case good furniture market is even worse, most those people have moved into Kitchens, because people will pay $ 50,000 for a custom kitchen cabinet group but won't pay $ 4,000 for a correctly made chest of drawers.
Having said that, no one tufts a Chesterfield like Hancock and Moore, while Leathercraft is pretty good, they don't get the magic of H&M when it comes to deep tufts on units that are comfortable to sit on. A fully tufted Chesterfield is also one of the hardest and most labor intensive pieces to make if you do it right, so they're going to be over $ 5K. Buttons are sewn on with needle and thread, not installed with a tagging gun like most cheaper makers use. As for durability with kids, what are the rules in the house? That determines if a sofa is going to last, not the piece itself. My wife and I raised both our two kids with top quality furniture in the house, it all survived just fine (we still have it all and they are in their late 20's now), but we had rules in the house and I would do the cleaning/conditioning protocol on the leathers pieces every 6 months. I've seen customers kids destroy the same quality of pieces in 3 years, too. The better pieces are made to last years, but ultimately it really depends on how the family uses the pieces.