In modern families, the living room is generally the center of family activities.

 

What is the core furniture in the living room? In most families, the sofa will definitely be voted for.

 

The style of the sofa, the color matching of the interior, and the comfort lay the foundation for the visual and functional aspects of the living room. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that the sofa is the soul of a living room.

 

Although sofas are not FMCG, many sofas can still be sold every year in the global market. In fact, most people who buy sofas do not know much about sofas. For example, you can buy a sofa for a few hundred or a thousand yuan. In high-end stores, sofas imported from Italy can be sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan each, and some people buy them. What is the difference between the two? I guess few people can tell.

 

Many people think that the most important thing about sofas is style and color. In fact, it is not. Sofas are typical functional furniture. The most important things for a sofa are the fabric used, the metal frame, and the familiarity of the seat cushion and backrest. The importance of style and color may be ranked after these four standards.

Why are Italian sofas expensive?

Most of the best sofas in the world are made by Italian brands. The main products of high-end Italian furniture brands, such as B&B, Cassia, Flex Form, and Poltroon Frau, are sofas.

 

Why are their sofas so expensive? Of course, it is mainly due to pricing strategy, and the other is the high cost of development and design. Another important thing is that top-grade materials are very expensive.

 

Usually, the sofas displayed in the store will use the most expensive fabrics, the best colors, the best metal frames, and the best effects.

 

How much is the most expensive sofa fabric?

Our Italian customers have told us that the purchase price of imported Italian cowhide is normally 5 USD per square foot. Note that this is the raw material price, which is the price at which cowhide agents purchase Italian cowhide, excluding the profit of sofa brand manufacturers.

 

But this kind of cowhide is just entry-level cowhide, which is painted leather (painted leather is actually spray-painted leather). The real good cowhide is unpainted cowhide, which is full-grain leather (vegetable-tanned, Benoit dyeing process) on the market. This kind of leather is also mostly the best in Italy. I don’t know much about this aspect, so I won’t go into details.

 

Metal furniture frames

 

Metal frame of sofa

The metal frame materials of sofas that can be seen on the market are mainly the following types: wooden frame, sponge frame, and metal frame.

 

Wooden frames are currently mainstream in the sofa industry in Asia. However, in Australia and Europe, only niche and retro brands use wooden frames. The top brands mentioned above generally use metal frames for sofas. The sponge-frame sofa was only used by TOGO sofas in the 1970s.

 

Metal furniture frames

 

There are two main reasons why sponge-frame and metal-frame sofas are rarely seen in Asia:

The first is that these sofas are currently only available from some brands in Italy or other European countries. To become a high-end brand, most of the consumer groups in Asia cannot spend a lot of money on sofas, and those who do are only a few.

 

Manufacturers cannot afford to spend hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy real objects for analysis and study, and there are not so many sales groups. High counterfeiting is a major flaw. At the same time, even if the style is copied to make cheap imitations, the effect is greatly discounted.

 

The second is that it costs a lot of money to open molds to produce sofas with sponge frames or metal frames. This kind of mold costs tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, which is also a huge investment.

 

These two barriers have stopped most domestic sofa manufacturers, so you basically don't see metal frame sofas in China, and there are very few pure sponge frame sofas.

 

There are three advantages to metal-frame or sponge-frame sofas.

The first is high strength, which is much stronger and more durable than wooden frames.

The second is to save space. Metal frames and sponge frames can make the sides and backs very slender, which is something that wooden frames can never do.

 

Metal furniture frames

 

If the cost of making molds is not counted, metal frame and sponge frame sofas are not much more expensive than wooden frame sofas. If the output is high, the production speed is actually faster, which represents the future direction of sofas.

 

For wooden frame sofas, which currently account for the majority of sofas, the main problem is to use real materials and some good wood to make the frame. Because these are wrapped inside and cannot be seen. If the brand or factory uses inferior wood, the buyer cannot find it and can only rely on time to test it.