So our couch is gone and we need a new one. Long dramatic backstory, not important. So we need to buy a new one. First impulse is to go to a furniture store etc. but times being what they are - is there a better way to find a new couch?
Well, there’s always Craigslist, but I don’t think that’s a way to get a new couch.
You could take a trip to High Point, North Carolina, but that may be a bit far from the “Pacific NorthWet”.
There are a bunch of manufacturers and discount furniture shops in the area. They’ll let you pick out exactly what you want, then build it and ship it to you.
How are you defining “a better way to find a new couch?” What is missing from the usual approach (visit a bunch of furniture stores and pick one out from what they show you)?
Some stores will let you choose which fabric you want on the sofa. Others let you customize almost the whole thing, including arms, back, cushions, etc. Or you could find a old sofa you like and get it reupholstered.
We bought a fabulous leather couch off craigslist for $75, original price $2500 (they still had the receipt.) it’s worth a look. Lots of people don’t want to move furniture and get rid of great stuff for very cheap.
They probably stole the receipt along with the couch. 
If price is the object of concern here, and you aren’t picky about the style, color, or fabric, etc., then you could check out the thrift stores. They usually have sofas at bargain prices.
Reported.
Couches for $75 or so at second hand stores.
Isn’t this what Ebay was invented for?
You can also sometimes get them for free, if they’re a bit worn and someone doesn’t want to bother moving them. Of course, caveat emptor on any second-hand couch.
What does “times being what they are” mean? Has there been a wave of furniture store shootings or something?
IMO it means, “recognizing that I’m a lot poorer and have less job security than I expected to have at this point in my life.”
Back to OP:
Another vote for checking out craigslist. I recently moved cross-country and downsized a lot. As such I was selling a lot of lightly used fairly new furniture at 1/4 or less of what I paid for it. All with receipts. Several families made out real nicely from this.
The thing to do is look more in the locales where people are better-off than you. That’s where you can find nicer stuff at prices lower than what you’d pay for the new stuff in your price range.
If you’re truly broke, then local thrift stores and craigslist in your immediate zip code are the best way to solve your problem at rock-bottom prices. But you’ll also get a rock-bottom product. And probably one with a lot more mileage already on it, which means a lot less mileage left for your family.
Good luck.
One thing to be concerned if buying used is bed bugs. Always great to be able to ask the people who are selling or freecycling it, but at a thrift shop who knows and there could be cross contamination from other stuff they are selling. I might be tempted to store it somewhere till I could treat it (or ma-nature can by low or hot temperatures - IIRC under -1F or over 111F will kill them in 2 hours - but that must be the temperature of the bug’s environment deep inside so more time is needed for the couch to get there).
Thanks, all. I have those same concerns about bedbugs.
What I meant by “times being what they are” is the fact that there are things available for purchase now online that did not formerly exist. I didn’t know if there was an online retail market for furniture or some other unconventional method I wasn’t aware of, similar to buying in South Carolina, which I would’ve tried when living back in Virginia. So it looks like I’ll be watching the ads just like always. I feel like I’m coming across like an idiot, but I just didn’t want to buy a couch for $900 only to find out I could’ve gotten the same couch for $75 at coucheseveryonebut singular1knewabout.net a week later.
Thanks all!
Do a Google search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=online+furniture+buying
Any of these sites have anything of interest?
That site has such good customer service, too.
The problem with upholstered furniture is that you can’t see how it’s constructed. So you could, in fact, be looking at two sofas that appear identical but have vastly different prices, because one is poorly built while the other is sturdily built out of a solid wood frame. The cheaper one might be fine for a few years, but will probably be ready for the landfill after that, while the expensive one might be worth reupholstering and keeping for decades.
I never want to see the words leather and Craigslist in the same sentence again…
For us, we find the best source for new furniture is a huge furniture store warehouse not too far away. Just a local, single-location, place. Incredibly large selection but for something like a sofa we go through their books of makers (NC), styles and materials and order one. Much cheaper and better quality than chain places.
They don’t advertise, so we sort of stumbled across while looking thru the Yellow Pages. Obviously a long time ago. Perhaps Internet searching turns up these sort of places.
There used to be a place that was quasi-wholesale. Also huge. You got a “pass” from a retailer and went there to buy stuff quite cheap. Not all retailers did this since their commission was much smaller, but some deemed it better than no commission.
Ask around for the biggest place in the region.