There's not a specific forum to review, sorry. You just have to browse this site and others like it, post by post. In the 80's and 90's there was a massive move to China for most all US Furniture companies, because customers demanded lower prices. By doing so, manufacturers gave the US buying public exactly what they wanted - lower prices. None of the people running these businesses wanted to go to China and fire their hometown workers, nor shut down their USA factories....they had to do it because the consumer demanded it. The thing is, they kept their old USA styles and names. I remember back about 1992 when the Hooker Furniture people came into my store and proudly announced they would be the first USA company to be 100 % made in China - how much did I want to order? I could rock the world with cheap prices in my area. I ordered nothing. Nada. When people come in my store and say "Oh, your stuff is too expensive" I remind them I am a USA-made store, and if they want Chinese made inexpensive there are 20 stores in the area they can go to (now there's about five left!)

That's what has happened. You can't have cheap and Made in USA. You have to decide if you want the inexpensive (like Ashley from China) or the well made (like the Hancock and Moore from Hickory NC). There's really no in-between by more than a few percentage points. The Ashley Recliner is $ 500, the H&M $ 1,500. You really DO get something for your money in the mix, its not all fluff. The average worker in a furniture plant in China makes .50 an hour. His American counterpart makes about $ 20.00 per hour, and has FICA, Medicare, OSHA requirements, Health Insurance, a 401K plan and Worker's Comp. There is no way a manufacturer can be competitive with the Chinese workforce and maintain a similar pricing structure. And do we really want them to? No....we want our fellow Americans to have a decent standard of living, and these men and women that work in the factories in North Carolina are by no means wealthy at those wages, but they are mainstream America.

Furniture is not rocket science. It requires "X" amount of skilled labor and "X" amount of materials to do it correctly. Everyone knows how to make it correctly, its not a trade secret. So if you know that to make that sofa right its going to be $ 3,000 at retail - and the dealers say "no! we want a $ 2,000 sofa because our customers want to pay only that much", then the maker has to do what? He has to either cut down the labor, or cut out some materials - no other way. That's exactly what has occurred. Cheap Chinese labor and Cheap Chinese materials. Did you know profit margins are actually HIGHER on the crap from China then the pieces built in the USA? Most Chinese stuff is so poorly made that it cost as much to ship it as it does to produce it. I can buy a Chinese leather sofa for $ 399 at dealer cost...and sell it at $ 899 and folks think they are getting a bargain, because the Hancock and Moore I sell for $ 2,799 is 3x as expensive (and there is no way I can double my cost on an H&M piece).

This is why I started this forum, and participated in other ones as well. Its not a 'viral marketing' program (I'm not clever enough for that), it was to help educate folks so when they went to buy products for their home, they could learn how to tell a good piece from a bad one. You can no longer rely on brand names, you have to judge for yourself on each piece you see. You have to put on blinders to the SALE TAG that is on the piece and learn what to look for, and then determine if there is value for the price being asked or offered. That's the real trick of it all.

Hope that helps to explain it some and maybe give you a new perspective of what happened to the US furniture industry.