Everybody has sat on a wiggly chair, put another book on a sagging shelf, seen the telltale brown color of particle board gleaming from a dented table, brought home a furnishing that did not match, and thrown out several pieces of furniture; most likely all of this happened with mass-produced furniture. It starts from a designer who does not know much about the materials and types of construction and end with a deceitful salesperson telling nonsense to make a sale. In between, store owners just wanting to make money, factory workers repeating the same operation continuously, packers trying to force the item into the smallest box possible, shippers hopping nobody noticed when they dropped the package, play their part, because none of them care about the product or costumer. But people keep buying mass-produced furniture, using it, trashing it, and then buying it again. People should realize that doing so uses up more time shopping, wastes money in the long run, and they never get a beautifully furnished home.
Factory made furniture almost never completely fulfills what the buyer looks for. Too big or too small, too dark or too light, too modern or too rustic, too plain or too fancy, and many others, furniture designers could never get every variable correct. Even if they did get it right for one person, it would undoubtedly be wrong for another. Generally, people tend to settle with buying a piece of furniture not quite what they wanted because they could not find what they desired at a furniture store. They end up unsatisfied, and every time they walk by that item they partly regret their purchase. Sadly, this occurs more often than not because of the consumer’s apathy toward looking outside the retail store and finding a craftsman who custom builds and cares about quality, the product, and the customer.
Quality, everyone wants it and everyone looks for it. However, to most manufacturers the quality of the products does not seem important to the manufacture. They just use marketing tactics to convince shoppers that they build with quality, but they only build to look like quality. Furniture makers use veneered particleboard or stained cheap wood on almost all their mass-produced furniture. It looks pretty when consumers buy it, but a after a little use, every dent will shine out because the wood underneath does not match. Also, most of the joints they use in their furniture end up loosening with time and starting to wiggle long before they should, not only creating unstable furniture, but this could potently threaten the safety of a child who enjoy climbing on furniture. If a shopper wants to buy quality furniture, then ruling out mass-produced furniture helps eliminate countless mistakes.
When companies create furniture, they worry about how to build it efficiently, not just about the greatness of the final product. They have to worry about having as little waste as possible. Raw materials determine the dimensions of the product. If the product looks best when eight and a half feet long, but they can only obtain the raw material eight feet or ten feet long, they would not hesitate to take of six inches off the length and hope that the proportions still look good. Rather than buying the ten feet long piece and wasting the extra to get a better looking project, because the added cost to buying a longer piece may cause it to be unprofitable. Likewise, they design their furniture around the capability of the machines, because any handwork increases the cost. Sadly no one who mass-produces furniture has the final product at the forefront of their designing.
Although anyone can buy mass-produced furniture easily for a cheap price, “You get what you pay for” as the old saying goes. Cheap furniture equates cheaply made furniture that will not last and will end up filling the landfills. Furniture with loose joints, sharp corners, veneered surfaces, and ugly proportions. Not anything people can proudly own for the rest their life. However, since buyer keep buying them, makers keep making the same junky furniture. If the money comes in, they will not change their approach. Hopefully, someday people will stop buying such furniture and force the creators to make their mass-produced furniture better.
The toothbrush has many uses in a woodshop. So before you throw out that old brush, rinse it off and take it to the shop.
