Sofa so good?

[TightEnd]

Its the first year this one has troubled me.

It started on Xmas day, by some strange lapse in taste I happened to have ITV on in the evening and of course the inevitable adverts crop up in every break.

These invite you to give up your boxing day morning to go and buy a sofa, usually for £399.

Then on boxing day itself I was in the car on the way to a sporting fixture when I had to pass the retail park. My passage was delayed at the roundabout by queues and queues of cars trying to get into the car park. The retail park consists of

- FurnitureLand
- Harveys (Furniture)
- DFS
- Carpetright
- KFC
- McDonalds

Allowing for some people no doubt being unable to go more than 48 hours without a KFC or a McDonalds then I have to face the fact that hundreds of people wanted to buy furniture, and more particularly sofas, on Boxing Day

Now I decided to analyse this. Of course if you have recently moved home you might need a new sofa. Perhaps the replacement cycle for sofas has accelerated and they now need replacing more frequently. Beyond that, I began to struggle. I turned to my 10 year old and asked him.

His reply was redolent of one who knows me all too well

"Dad, please don't worry about it, I don't know the reason"

However, good blondeites, you should be able to humour me with answers to the following:

- Why, in the morning on Boxing Day, would you be queueing to buy furniture?

- What is it about those adverts that makes you think "Oooohhhh £399 I must have a new sofa"?

- How often do you buy a new sofa?

- What is it about the British psyche that means you just have to go to the sales?

I await your answers with interest.
 
 

[Dewi_cool]

I hink we need JAmes the Sofa King to answer this

[ACE2M]

because multitudes of people don't buy a sofa in the 3 months preceeding xmas because they know they can get a 'bargain' on boxing day. My girlfriends brother bought one yesterday incidentally, £1200 reduced from £2300, brilliant.

[Wardonkey]

I have never bought a sofa....

[Royal Flush]

lol Tighty i have been having a similar rant!

All i could figure is people wait till now to buy them as they know they are cheaper, the question is why do the sofa companies use this time of the year?

I wondered if it was partly a 'new year, new look' thing but there appears to be no rational reason to it.

I want the mystery solved aswell!

[TightEnd]

I understand there is pent up demand..if you move in Oct, you might as well wait til after Xmas for the bargain. Fully understood.


my real query I suppose is..where does the Boxing day demand come from year after year? how often do people replace sofas?

[Royal Flush]

I understand there is pent up demand..if you move in Oct, you might as well wait til after Xmas for the bargain. Fully understood.


my real query I suppose is..where does the Boxing day demand come from year after year? how often do people replace sofas?

Well not everyone is replacing them tighty! The number of first time buyers is surely quite high each year with the growth in population, couple that with replacement sofa's people need when their current ones either break or become 'ugly'

I am sure it is not 90% of the population going out buying a new sofa!

[Suited_Jock]

Im going to go buy a sofa today after work... seriously.

[kinboshi]

Maybe people rush out and buy them so the adverts don't continue to run?  There's only so much of the very smooth, but slightly disturbing, Martin Kemp talking about bargain sofas that anyone can take.

[matt674]

my guess would be that shops know that people receive money for Christmas now sometimes instead of presents, so they are competing with each other to try and win the business of all these people who've all received money and have no ideas on what to spend it on.

I have a friend who moved into a new house 3 weeks ago, he's been staying at another friends house for the last 3 weeks because he refused to buy stuff to furnish his house because he knew if he hung on til this week he'd save a fortune

[lazaroonie]

but it doesnt make any sense - DFS etc have sales on for 11 1/2 months of the year. You are not getting anymore of a bargain than you were say at the end of october.

There is absolutely no way that a shop is going to sell volumes of a product at half of its original price, unless the original price has been artificially inflated. Its a big con, and the consumer falls for it every time.

Incidentally the quality of product has gone thru the floor in recent years. More and more imports from the east (where they can produce and ship a leather suite for around £200) has seen manufacturers in europe cut costs to try and compete.  You will be lucky to get 3 years normal use out of one now.

[matt674]

but it doesnt make any sense - DFS etc have sales on for 11 1/2 months of the year.

Yeah this one makes me laugh - the advert comes on saying "DFS the last week of the winter sale, massive savings to be found in store" and the reason its the last week isnt because the prices will go up the following week its because its the start of "THE NEW DFS SPRING SALE"........ where they just try and flog whatever didnt sell in the winter sale

[Chili]

Tighty - I used to work for a very large Sofa company and the question of how often do people REALLY need to buy sofa's baffled me also. On the question of incesant sales, it is really a big con.   The company in question had about 6 massive sales per year, the consumers were told the sofa's were Double Discount or ?% off etc!  The reality is that the price quoted as the original price was NEVER the original price. 

I asked how they got away this and they said the price is listed somewhere as a recommended price in some catalogue or other but they never used that anyway.  It is there in black and white though in case a customer asked to see the original price.  Disgusting!

[tikay]

A sofa is for life.

[charmaine]

Our two leather cream ( ewww ) sofas are knackered , what with the little ones .
Paul wont buy anymore yet tho  i want brown leather now ( hint hint )