Furniture prices

[Jack]

'm looking at the S2 dining table, its a clean design I like but at $6k? Why so pricey for something this simple that I could make in a couple of days or am I living in the past?

[Leon]

Make one yourself. If you can make one for less money considering the value of your time and cost of materials you will be dollars ahead and for some people, that would not be possible.

If you are a decent wood worker you may be way a head of the game building it yourself. If you are not a wood worker, if you can explain why a surgeon charges so much you might come up with a similar type answer. Simple looking is very often a result of good planning and honed skills.

If everyone could do everything that everyone else does everything would be dirt cheap.

[Jimbo]

Assuming you have all the tools and skills required, you could probably make something very similar.

Calling it "simple", however, is, IMHO, simplistic :)

[Jimbo]

Another point: I buy ready-made legs and fittings and can put together a dining table or coffee table with a country finish in a day or two including finishing, and they certainly are better than the cheap tables I can buy, and as good as the mid-priced stuff - and less expensive than both. However, to compare my tables to the high-end stuff would require better quality materials, better quality finish and some changes in construction. Personally, I have found the procurement, and quality, of materials is nearly always the biggest problem. Now, SWMBO would argue that I have other problems but that's a completely different topic.

[RicodJour]

You couldn't make it in a couple of days. The finishing would take you that long.

R

[Schroeder]

If you figure in shop costs ...and if you figure $35/hour...I guarantee the $6000 won't seem pricy....

IMHO - Schroeder

[Stephen M]

Having recently completed my own solid cherry dinning table, I can speak from experience.

Except for the table tops... all of the designs on the site have no seams (drawer fronts and such are not made from glue-ups) and no descenable wood defects. If you want to replicate that look, expect as much as 50% waste when purchasing that wood.

I did, and I had close to $1000 in wood and supplies into my table. I had a somewhat more complicated design, but had over 100 hours into it. I think "a couple days" is unrealistic.

Is $6K alot? Sure but, it's not that crazy. I could not afford that kind of money for a a table, but I have the skills and equipment.

According to my casual research:

[hex]

No way you could build it as a one-off in two days. The devil's in the details. Look at the legs. The mix of straight sections for mortising and sweeping curves would take half a day to work out (at least one prototype if not two) then if you are very lucky half a day to cut the legs out and shape them. Figure a full day to build up the top and mill straight sections. Depending on how you are going to do the joinery figure half a day minimum for that. Up front you likely had a day in buying or finding/sorting, surfacing and matching the stock. Now figure at least half a day to prep for finish ( a day or more if you really care about the finish) and three half days of finishing. So that adds up to something like six days -- if you are ambitious, cut corners on the joinery, and do only the minimum required surface prep. At $6k they are proud -- but if you don't have the tools or the know how it's not an unfair price.

On the other hand maybe I work way to slowly.

hex

-30-

[GROVER]

Does it pay Tiger Woods to mow his own lawn? Your ability to earn your living at your chosen profession should tell you what your time is worth per hour. That should be factored into your estimate of the cost of the item. Projects with clean "simple" lines may be harder to fabricate than they appear .However if its the pleasure of building it you seek, by all means go for it. The perceived saved money should not be the only incentive. Joe G

[Rick]

There have already been a bunch of good replies . . . all appropriate. One issue not mentioned yet though is that this is a company that is in business to make a profit . . . to amortize equipment, provide workmens comp, pay overhead for a commercial effort . . . hire and train employees etc. Six grand is a lot, but not at all out of line assuming this is truly a quality product.

Rick

[Pangloss]

-->At Green Design Furniture, a method of manufacturing furniture was developed using the inherent strength of the wood itself to hold the furniture together. It is a system of interlocking joinery that allows the parts to slide and lock into each other, using full-length dovetailed connections. This innovative system, developed and patented by Douglas Green, virtually eliminates the use of screws, nuts, bolts, and other fasteners.

What's innovative about sliding dovetails? It's rather presumptive to claim that they developed it. And how in the heck can you patent something that's been in common use for centuries?

Anyhow, to do a one-off copy I reckon it would take me at least 40 hours (not counting the design, picking up lumber and supplies, and fixing mistakes) and probably $500 US for supplies. Even if it took me 100 hours and I paid myself $50 per hour I'd still come out ahead of their price. On the other hand, you gotta figure in the cost of all of those tools, shop space, etc. Actually, at this point, there is no way my wife would permit spending that much money on the table when she knows that I could build one at much less (unless, of course, I sold my tools to pay for it)

[Jeff]

Knock yourself out but I question your estimate. The table has curved tapered legs, curved cross sections, at least 12 M&T joints, optional extension leaves in what appears to be cherry. For artisan pieces of this nature, $6K is not unrealistic.

[Andy Dingley]

It's about $1k to make it, $1k to finish it, and $4k to run the sort of shop where people who spend $6k on tables like to buy them.

Yes, you could make it. But they get the money because they know how to _sell_ it too.

If I had $1 for every time some woodworker quite reasonably says "I could make that", then I'd have a lot more $ than I ever had trying to sell $6k tables to people who bought them instead of making their own.

[J T]

Thu, Feb 8, 2007, 5:19am (EST-3) [e-mail] (Jack) doth posteth:

I'm looking at the S2 dining table, its a clean design I like but at $6k? Why so pricey for something this simple that I could make in a couple of days or am I living in the past?

Yeah, but how many are they selling at that price? Of course there's always someone with more money than brains. I betcha I could make a more money selling a gizmo at $100 each over trying to selling them at $1000 each.

JOAT Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

- Johann Von Schiller

[J. Clarke]

How much is it going to cost you to convince the courts that his patent is invalid?

[J. Clarke]

They guy's Web site says that he limits production to a thousand a year.

He hasn't learned the adage "sell to the classes you'll live with the masses, sell to the masses you'll live with the classes". And he doesn't charge near enough for it to become a status symbol.

I suspect that he's hoping that he can sue somebody into licensing his patent.

[Leuf]

Not if it cost you $101 to make it.

And if it cost you anywhere near $100 I strongly suspect you'd either get tired of it or die of exhaustion before you reached that $900 profit you could have gotten finding that one person to buy it at $1000.

Of course if they don't want it in yellow then it's going to cost them a lot more than $100 anyway.

-Leuf

[Leon]

Oh, Good Grief.

[Tom Watson]

You think that this design is simple?

This is a piece of CNC origami.

Look at the grain direction and ask yourself about how to accomplish the legs in natural timber.

Look at how the legs butt out on their interior edges to produce a squared section for joinery.

Ask yourself why the stiffeners on the obverse of the top run in the direction that they do, rather than the opposite.

It is an admirable visual concept containing a deceptive manufacturing truth.

Regards,

Tom Watson

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

[Lew Hodgett]

RE: Subject

I'm reminded of the comment about Hinckley yachts.

If you have to ask, you can't afford.

Lew