If you want to buy new furniture for your home but still want to save money, try looking for furniture that is almost thrown away. Don’t think that this piece of furniture is used or that it doesn’t work because it was almost thrown away. This type of furniture is new furniture that has been damaged or rejected due to whether it is scuffed, the wrong color of paint, has chipped or perforated parts, or other minor damage.

Go to just about any major furniture store, and there’s a room in the back with scraped tables and restored sofas. These broken items are sold at discount prices, offering a project to someone who can turn them into undamaged furniture or furniture that isn’t perfect but functional.

Some large furniture stores will throw away furniture that isn’t perfect or if a customer complains about the item they received, the store will refund the money and ask them to dispose of it themselves. But nowadays some shops repair the imperfect furniture and resell it at a discount. The person who repairs the furniture will mix and match parts, such as table legs, as necessary to create a fully functional kit (if aesthetically flawed).

The model doesn’t sound too complicated, but this is also rare in the furniture industry. Furniture repair programs like this are considered sustainable both for the environment and for the business model of furniture shops. And they do it quite transparently.

Today some major furniture stores offer the more common furniture buyback options along with services -similar to repair services. Given that many people report still having their furniture 10 years after purchase, this program can only prolong the use of their product. People could bring the product back to polish and fix it and the old furniture would be brand new again. It’s more of a future state, to sell furniture back to furniture stores.

–sh