Knowledge is ammunition when spending your
\n
\n\t\t
\nmoney, but many furniture shoppers are unarmed on the showroom floor.<\/p>\n
Today, furniture can carry misleading labels, suggesting, for example, that a piece is made of solid cherry wood when it’s really particleboard with a cherry wood veneer. The Federal Trade Commission in 2002 rescinded consumer-friendly guidelines for accurately labeling and advertising home furniture, claiming guides were unnecessary.<\/p>\n
“That’s an important point to note because they can sell any kind of furniture they want and label it any way they want,” said Jennifer Litwin, author of Best Furniture Buying Tips Ever.<\/p>\n
Just as bad, many furniture salespeople are underinformed about the products they sell, she said.<\/p>\n
Litwin rates furniture for Consumers Digest and went undercover to visit more than 500 furniture showrooms around the country as research for her book, Furniture Hot Spots: The Best Furniture Stores and Web sites Coast to Coast.<\/p>\n
Besides being skeptical about labels and salespeople, consumers may want to shy away from the costliest pieces, Litwin said. “You absolutely do not have to spend thousands on furniture. That’s what my research showed me,” she said. “At the low end, you find a lot better value than at the high end.”<\/p>\n
U.S. consumers spent about $55 billion on furniture in 2012, according to the federal Consumer Expenditure Survey. Sales this year in the wider home-furnishings industry are estimated to top $80 billion.<\/p>\n
Now is a good time of the year to shop for furniture, Litwin said. Stores will be using promotions to lure customers, who tend to be cash-strapped after the holidays.<\/p>\n
The Morning Call is a Tribune Publishing newspaper in Allentown, Pa. E-mail Gregory Karp at yourmoney@tribune.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Knowledge is ammunition when spending your<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}