Do you really not understand the difference between an item available for a dollar per unit in quantities of 1000 units and FOB Shanghai as compared to an item available for nine dollars in quantity of one at your local Wal-Mart Store?
Because people will pay our their asses for new furniture and a brand name. I don’t understand it either.
My boyfriend and I both have some nice furniture. All of it was given to us by friends/acquaintances (who often were moving it out to replace it with horrendously overpriced brand new furniture) or purchased dirt cheap on craiglist.
I wouldn’t do a search on expensive brands, though. If you want a leather sectional, look at all the used leather sectionals the internet has to offer, and go out to see the best-looking ones in person. You might find something really nice (but not a high-end brand necessarily) for next to nothing.
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a leather sectional; here’s a nice-enough one a few miles away from me for $250. Just the right size for my apartment, too.
Craigslist. You can get used furniture for incredibly cheap. I got a fantastic bunk bed that was only 9 months old, they bought it for $900 and I got it for $150.
The US has trees, but our labor is expensive.
In China, and similar countries, the labor is cheap but they don’t have any trees.
Although if you pulled a bench seat from an old used car you could probably modify it into a sofa.
If you want to try building your own, I’d suggest starting with a bench. Maybe a bench with cushions. You could use the pine and fir that you’d get down at the hardware store. For more complicated furniture, or for a more durable bench, you’d want to get furniture quality hardwood, which you won’t find at a typical hardware store. The price of that might surprise you. And it doesn’t work as easily as softwoods, either.
Upholstery foam is crazy expensive. The foam to stuff a 3 seater couch can easily run you 500+ dollars.
Craigslist. We just bought a really nice leather sofa for $75.
I would be leery of used upholstered furniture because bedbugs are so common.
I feel the OP’s pain. Furniture and eyeglass frames often sem like rackets.
Furniture is relatively expensive compared to a lot of other things because it is bulky and hard to ship from China. It is also very hard to build a box for a sofa that will protect it and allow a bunch of them to efficiently fill a standard shipping container. Have you seen the bizarre boxes chairs and sofas come in?
It’s not as if a Chinese manufacturer couldn’t make sofas cheaply and fill shipping containers, it’s just that they can fill a container with a lot more profitable things. Moving a container from North Carolina is a lot less expensive, and the difference is less than the increased US labor costs.
IKEA only works because most of the stuff they sell is MDF “Ready To Assemble”. There is not much savings in having the purchaser assemble a bookcase. The savings is in not shipping the air between the shelves.
Also, furniture requires a huge amount of floor space to sell and is very inefficient compared to most any other retail. Not sure what the industry term is, but the number of SKUs sold per square foot is far lower for a sofa than for a TV set, which is why you don’t see them generally sold at Target or Walmart. One of my old clients was a regional furniture store, and they had more than 1,000,000 sq feet of retail space.
Actually, divide by 10 to get the per-year cost.
I’ve never purchased new furniture. There’s too much great stuff you can get used. Go to an estate sale. Older people often take very good care of very expensive, quality furniture. Estate sales are great for furnishing a house, buying pots & pans, small appliances etc.
My bedroom set is a matching dresser, night stand, and headboard in top quality cherry. All from a single estate sale. I did buy new mattresses.
My living room sofa is a hide-a-bed from the 1950’s. I bought it from an estate sale in pretty good condition. Used it about six years and then got it reupholstered. I have a matching coffee table & end tables from the 1950’s that I love. A lot of guests have slept on that pull out hide-a-bed.
They are. But you don’t have to participate.
My last pair of glasses cost me about 30 bucks ($4.99 for the frames, $20 for the lenses, plus shipping). As long as you know your frame size (determined by the 3-4 numbers printed on all frames) and your prescription, you can get nice glasses for a fraction of the cost online.
Zenni Optical
seriously check these guys out, I found them from the Dope and its insane the prices you pay for quality glasses anywhere else.
I have a big head – no comments, please – and the little frames they sell here for the Thais are way small. It’s next to impossible to find a pair that fits me.
I remember the sticker shock I experienced when buying furniture for the first time when we bought our house in the days when the Internet was just getting started. While I would definitely start with Craigslist as a resource today, I would bet consignment stores are still a viable option, which is how our whole house was furnished. Basically, it’s where all the fancy furniture from the couple that just divorced, moved long distances and didn’t want to ship it, etc. ends up. We found a dining room furniture set we loved at a new furniture store that was $3,000. We found the exact same set a month later in a consignment store for $400 and bargained them down to $300 as one example of the deals you can get.
I would imagine many online eyeglass suppliers will ship internationally. You should see what options you have there.
I felt your pain for many years because I have a tiny face. They don’t carry my frame size in brick and mortar stores - outside of the kid’s sections, which usually don’t have adult-looking styles. It looks nearly as dumb to wear glasses 2" wider than your head as it does to wear too-small ones.
So you’re saying you’re a pinhead? 
But seriously though, I’m not keen on online glasses sellers, as I like to try them on first. I expect to pick up a couple pairs while we’re in the US next year.
Suck it up. If you really think it is too expensive, try to make your own.
This is actually a good way to understand it. Groceries to expensive? Grow a garden and start canning. Gas? Get a bicycle and ride the bus. Beer? Brew your own. Mechanic? Fix you own car.
Furniture? Well, I make my own furniture and it is severely a pain in the ass to make something of quality. To make a nice dining room table, say walnut or cherry, you can easily sink 500-1000 into the lumber (if not more). Then add another 500-1000 for tools and supplies (saw, jointer, router, glue, oil/varnish, sandpaper, whatever) and about 80 hours or your time (again, this is really the minimum for a hobbyist) and it starts to seem reasonable to spend 5k$ to get a really nice table. We have not even talked about the chairs.
If you can find a Salvation Army store near a more affluent neighborhood, you can score very high quality furniture for very little. Rich people get rid of their stuff because it’s dusty or out of style, I guess.