Monday, October 21, 2013

Are High End Sofas Made Internationally?

Are High End Sofas Made Internationally?

By Kevin Heywood


During these present times, it's a lot more common for consumer products to be made overseas as companies in every industries look to outsource production to cheaper cost areas to help lessen the cost of production. On certain industry that has accepted this trend is home furniture which during the past few years has witnessed an explosion in the quantity of providers outsourcing production to China. So if you are looking to get a high-class sofa this year, how possibly is it that you'll be purchasing a product that was developed somewhere else?

Since the 1980s, the trend of commercial outsourcing has stimulated nearly all sectors as companies have looked to draw out additional economies from the manufacturing procedure in order to keep competing. Seen as logical corollary towards the fad towards bulk production, virtually all businesses of scale have desired to base a minimum of a selection of their manufacturing in countries such as China or India in which labour costs are dramatically lower than their home market. For a labor intensive business like household furniture production, outsourcing production has particular benefits and as the cost of delivery has reduced has become only very popular.

Luxury sofa production is somewhat insulated from the trend towards outsourcing primarily because the money margins at the top of the market tend to be stronger and therefore are to some degree shielded from the cost pressures driving the trend. As luxury sofas obtain their value from perceptions of style, the manufacturing method itself tends to be led by developers who mainly operate in the developed marketplaces and whose skills are much less susceptible to outsourcing than upholstery, tailoring and carpentry. Therefore, high end sofa manufactures happen to be slow to delegate their production with many providers opting not to contract out fully.

However, in spite of these remarks there has been a recognizable craze for manufacturers at the luxury end of the market to outsource production in the past few years. While still sustaining design teams doing work in the home market, many expensive producers are beginning to accept outsourcing as competition warms up at the very top end of the market and discerning consumers become more sensitive to price when making purchasing decisions. For that reason, it is now quite common for manufacturers to outsource sofa frame production and fabric to lower cost destinations while still designing and completing the product in the home marketplace.

Consequently, it may be considerably demoralising trying to find a sofa maker who continues to base their manufacturing at home. Yet, one region of the industry that stays safe from the challenges of outsourcing are manufacturers who offer bespoke to order services. Given the specific to detail nature of this style of manufacturing, it's near difficult to delegate production without significantly affecting the quality of build and lead times of taking products to market. So if you are keen to ensure your next sofa is of the very top quality, choosing a bespoke sofa could be the way forward!




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