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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we turn to furniture. During the pandemic, as many people were spending more time at home or relocating to different cities and states altogether, the demand for furniture shot up. The quality of that furniture, for many people, it left a lot to be desired. Based on online reviews and social media posts, furnishings that used to last for a decade or more are now holding up for just a few years.

Beyond being a waste of money, the problem has the potential to create a lot of waste in our landfills. Joining us now to explain why the quality has gone down even as prices continue to rise and what you can do to make sure you are getting the highest quality piece you can afford is Rachel Wolfe, reporter covering consumer trends in The Wall Street Journal's Life & Work bureau. Her latest piece, maybe you saw it, is titled Your New $3,000 Couch Might be Garbage in Three Years. This is Why. Rachel, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Rachel Wolfe: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Is there a comparison right out of the box here to make between what we call fast fashion, a lot of cheap clothes that people buy relatively inexpensive, they throw them away pretty quickly, buy more clothes, fast fashion to something you might label fast furniture?

Rachel Wolfe: Absolutely it feels that way.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote, "Instead of once-a-decade purchases, furniture makers and restorers say couches are becoming more like fast fashion produced with cheaper materials, prone to trends, and headed to the landfills over just a few years." Are there metrics or are there numbers to say how the lifespan of the average couch has changed over time?

Rachel Wolfe: Absolutely. More restorers, furniture makers themselves, artisans are saying that couches that used to last at least a decade, but we're thinking often generations here, our parents, grandparents who had the same couches for an entire lifespan, were able to reupholster them if they got stained. Now, somebody might get maybe seven years out of a couch. That might even include replacing the foam that's inside of the cushions because these things just are not wearing the way that they once did.

Brian Lehrer: You're right about how there isn't one simple reason but many causes. Where would you start? What are some of the factors that furniture industry experts are saying is driving this decline in quality, even by the way as prices seem to go up?

Rachel Wolfe: There are a few different factors at play. One is the proliferation of makers. In the past, there were a handful of furniture companies responsible for the vast majority of sofas in the United States. They wanted customers to keep returning to them year after year. They wanted their customer's kids to come to them. There was a really big focus on quality on the customer retention piece. Sofas were still a major purchase, but you could expect that they would really last. That's not the case anymore. There are way more brands, so consumers have a lot more options.

Aesthetically, that could be for the best, but when it comes to ensuring quality, it gets a lot more complicated. We're also seeing that people are a little bit more comfortable with this fast fashion thing. We all have those pieces of clothing that we know are only going to last a couple of wears, why should a couch be any different? There's also just the fact that materials have gotten a lot more expensive.

We saw the price of wood shoot up during the pandemic and other materials have fluctuated, that price has come back down. My personal perspective is that it's not so much malice as much as it is that manufacturers are trying to figure out how to produce sofas at the lowest possible cost for them, and then at a price point that more customers can afford. It just might not last them very long.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open for your couch calls. Did you recently get rid of an old reliable piece of furniture, not just couches, only to have the replacement not hold up? Did you fix it, get a refund from the retailer? Any tips from furniture retailers that you found were, in fact, high-quality or maybe you want to share how to reduce waste, even secondhand furniture buyers? Where do you get the best items for the best quality, and even those items seem to be more expensive than ever? It's another thing that we're going to get to in this conversation.

Used furniture is becoming more expensive. 212-433-WNYC. Who has a story? Any furniture dealers out there? Anybody who works at, I won't name major furniture stores, but you know what they are, or antique stores selling used pieces, or anybody else with a story or a question for Rachel Wolfe from The Wall Street Journal who wrote the article, Your New $3,000 Couch Might be Garbage in Three Years. This is Why. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 call or text. You may not be surprised, Rachel, that even as I was finishing that invitation, pretty much all our lines are full.

A lot of people have experiences with this. One of the things that you mentioned in the piece puts the onus back on us, meaning Americans in general, Americans what you call shopaholic tendencies. As a reporter covering consumer trends, can you elaborate on where consumers are right now with post-pandemic spending, and whether shopaholic tendencies which were certainly a thing before the pandemic have changed in any way?

Rachel Wolfe: Spending is still up. It's one of the reasons that we didn't land in as much of a downturn as a lot of economists were predicting. What we also meant by our shopaholic tendencies is how tied we all are these days to trend cycles. I know that I personally fall victim to this, wanting your space to match that Instagram aesthetic. People are replacing their furniture more so that their furniture stays up-to-date, which was less common in the past. We are still spending plenty of money, including on furniture, though furniture spending is a little bit down from the height of the pandemic when we were all racing to upgrade our work-from-home setups.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from Charlotte in Jersey City, who says she's an independent upholster. Do I have that right Charlotte? Hi, you're on WNYC.

Charlotte: Hi. I'm a seamstress. I do everything basically that I can capable of close everything, but more and more people are calling me to, "Can you reupholster?" It could be just they want to redo the three cushions on the couch because they're getting stained and whatever. I wouldn't say it's a huge trend, but to really reupholster something is incredibly expensive, especially older things that are made beautifully and really hard to redo.

I've gotten more and more calls of people just doing a throw cover over the whole thing or covering the arms where the cat scratched everything. It's a lot cheaper than buying stuff. I will say the one problem with buying new, if you buy IKEA, everything is stapled and it's very hard to get to reupholster. You don't really have much of a choice, but to buy something new with a lot of the new furniture. I can cover it, and a lot of people are opting for that rather than buying new. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Charlotte, thank you very much. She mentioned the I-word, Rachel, where do you think IKEA fits into this conversation?

Rachel Wolfe: It's interesting the last quote in the story is one consumer who is really disappointed with their $3,000 sofa that they thought was going to last them a lifetime and ended up hardly lasting a couple of years before it looked way older than that, and this couple jokes that maybe they should go back to Big Lots. Big Lots is obviously known for having more affordable furniture. There is definitely a mindset here that says if the couch is going to fall apart no matter what, then you're better off spending less for that same quality. I don't know, I've had IKEA furniture and it's been great.

IKEA was not a company that came up in my reporting very much as one that consumers were unhappy with because I think that they know that they're buying that furniture at a really great price because maybe it's not going to be what they pass down to their kids. Where people are really frustrated is when they think they're getting something that they will be able to pass down, only for that not to be the case. Definitely not worth reupholstering that passed furniture my experts told me, but it could be worth the price for some of those heirloom pieces, even if it is thousands of dollars.

Brian Lehrer: Monique and company in Tarrytown, what's your dog's name, Monique?

Monique: Oh, that's Moose. He's in the background. Oh, my goodness, you've made me feel so guilty because I got rid of two couches. My sons were complaining about their favorite couches being thrown out. I tried selling them. I tried giving them away and because they were such great, heavy, wonderful pieces, they ended up being trashed, unfortunately. As I look forward to, is there a menu of things I should be looking for to have good solid pieces because I only want to invest once in a good piece of furniture? Do you have a checklist that I should be conscious of?

Brian Lehrer: That's such a great question, and it points to one of the things that I wanted to bring up from your article, Rachel, because you're right. I think this is with respect to leather in particular, but it can be generalized. Consumers often don't know what they're buying, right?

Rachel Wolfe: Exactly. People do not even know what they're buying, especially when you're buying from an online retailer, it's really hard to tell. I was trying to suss out the material composition for some of the couches that these consumers were complaining to me about, and I had a hard time figuring out for this leather couch. What you should be looking for is top-grain cowhide and not so-called genuine leather, which sounds great, but is actually not a single piece, but rather a slurry of leather scraps.

That's one factor if you're looking for leather. Another big thing is the frame. Frames are not built from hardwood, even plywood is okay like they used to be. Instead, what you're seeing is a lot of particle board, which is basically wood shavings and glue. That has a really hard time holding a screw after time, especially if it gets wet, it just disintegrates.

Brian Lehrer: Who knew.

Rachel Wolfe: One self-expert told me that's something that you can do as a consumer. We didn't promote individual brands in the story, which a lot of readers have come back to me and asked, "Which sofa should I buy?" I am not comfortable recommending any brands at this point because I have not tested sofas, and one issue is that even legacy brands are not always making sofas like they used to. There are still plenty that are amazing, but there's no longer a guarantee like there once was, even if it's made in the US. What you can do, however, is get underneath the couch and look at how the pieces are fit together.

If the wood is held together by itself in what is known as mortise and tenon joinery, then that's a really good thing. You want the wood to be fit into each other and not held on with an external bracket. The other thing that you can see is you could try shaking it around, like try moving the back, moving the arms, and if you notice a lot of [unintelligible 00:13:15], that's not great. You want it to feel really solid.

Going in person and really looking into how the couch is held together for yourself, and then asking the right questions around what it's made from. You should also be looking for high-density cushion foam, and that will have really small pores with not a lot of air, versus low-density foam, which needs to be replaced much more frequently.

Brian Lehrer: Monique, I hope that's some helpful information on how to shop for furniture. That was certainly new to me.

Monique: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, about your pet, you may be interested that the next segment when we're done with Rachel here on furniture is going to be on people's relationships with their pets. Maybe your dog named Moose will want to listen and I wonder if you-

Monique: Will do. It's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder--

Monique: It's amazing, the relationship.

Brian Lehrer: It's amazing, the relationship. I wonder if your dog is named Moose, what's your moose named? I'm just kidding. Thank you, Monique.

Monique: [laughs] Thank you. Bye-bye.

Brian Lehrer: What would you name a moose, Rachel? I guess that's beyond the scope of your reporting. Here is one more call. Maybe you'll have time for two. Taylor in Brooklyn has a story from this weekend. You're on WNYC. Hi, Taylor.

Taylor: Hi. I just wanted to give a shout-out to the ReStore, which is a brand that's run by Habitat for Humanity. It's like a Goodwill store mostly, which is always a great place to buy your furniture. Another great thing that they do there is they have building supplies. If you're doing a renovation or something like that, you can get secondhand building supplies and not contribute to producing more low-quality crap.

Brian Lehrer: Very good tip. Here's another one. Jeremy, I think is calling from his wood shop in Brooklyn. Do I have that right, Jeremy?

Jeremy: That's right. I'm calling here from the shop of BIG SIN WOOD in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Brian Lehrer: Go for it.

Jeremy: All right. I hope I can speak for other woodworkers listening throughout the city, but we are a vibrant community of craft people making quality pieces for people of all backgrounds and all budgets. I know my goal is to provide a high-quality investment piece that doesn't end up on the street. We see so much waste out on the sidewalk, and I really think it's disturbing. This idea of buy once cry once, I think is lovely. Spend once for this thing you know you're going to love forever and let it be a piece you can pass down to your kids as well.

Brian Lehrer: Jeremy, thank you. I'm thinking about the previous caller who talked about the used furniture, Rachel. I see that that's become expensive too, that back in 2022, the online antique furniture seller, Chairish, reported that the furniture resale market reached $15 billion in 2021, height of pandemic stay-at-home time. A $1 billion jump from 2020, and projected that the market will climb another $1 billion by the end of 2023. We're still waiting for that report to come out, but I'm just curious if in your reporting, you looked into how expensive secondhand furniture is getting compared to past years.

Rachel Wolfe: It's not something that I looked into specifically for this story. I do know anecdotally, it definitely can be expensive, that Chairish report doesn't speak to whether individual pieces have become more expensive, only that the market for them is booming. It's definitely the case that used pieces are attracting renewed interests and people are recognizing the quality that was present in the past that might not be there in their current pieces. I think that, again, from my own experience, I decorate with a ton of used pieces and I have still managed to find some really great deals.

If they are still out there whether or not secondhand places like Goodwill and The Salvation Army, they've raised prices on their furniture pieces. It seems like they're up at least a little bit, but I still think spending a couple of hundred dollars on a couch at Goodwill that's going to last for potentially 10 years is a great deal. It's all relative, that stuff. It can be expensive, but if what you're buying is really quality, I think you want to spend at least a couple of hundred dollars, even a couple of thousand dollars. The issue is when you're spending a couple of thousand dollars and it's falling apart.

Brian Lehrer: Falling apart, anyway.

Rachel Wolfe: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Some other lines from your reporting as we start to run out of time, one is Americans have more sofa options than ever. That's not necessarily to their benefit. You've been describing some of the reasons why you write social media posts bemoaning new furniture have shot up. Mentions of sofas that are low quality, falling apart, or uncomfortable or up 19% in 2023 across platforms including X, YouTube, and Reddit compared with 2020. Here's one more anecdote from a listener. This is via text. Listener writes, "I recently tried every way I could to give away a very well-made sofa from the mid-20th century that was in excellent repair and had recently been reupholstered in a very nice fabric.

I couldn't find anyone to take it off my hands despite nibbles on Craigslist and many offers to charities that accept furniture donations. Eventually, I had to give it to a company that hauls garbage. It would certainly have cost about what your guest describes a new sofa costing if it was found in a store. My takeaway was don't buy a sofa if you live in New York City. No one can deal with large objects here." I don't know. That might be overgeneralizing, but it's an interesting experience, right?

Rachel Wolfe: Absolutely. I live in New Orleans now, and trying to buy a new couch in New York was a whole other beast. Transportation can sometimes be as much as the sofa, but maybe after this story as that listener would've had a few more takers, maybe now people will appreciate a good old piece. That would be a personal dream of mine if more sofas get a second life, I would be thrilled.

Brian Wolfe: Speaking about a whole other beast, our next conversation will be about pets as members of the family. We thank, for this conversation, Rachel Wolfe, reporter covering consumer trends in The Wall Street Journal's Life & Work bureau. Her latest piece is titled Your New $3,000 Couch Might Be Garbage in Three Years. This Is Why. Thanks for sharing, Rachel.

Rachel Wolfe: Thanks so much.

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