My story of selecting a sofa-cum-bed

It was decided to buy some sturdy furniture, unlike the fragile plastic chairs, for my mother to sit. Instead of sofa, we decided to go for sofa-cum-bed which will serve two purposes i.e., sitting and sleeping.

After deciding that, I started my search. I would have enquired almost 20 furniture shops including various carpenter's workshop. The shops were spanned all the way from Nigdi to interiors of Pimpri. I found many similarities in the shops I visited. Some salient points are:

1. Most of the shop owners are from Rajasthan
2. Only Ad-hoc prices were told by most of them
3. Some bigger shops had catalog of sofa-cum-beds, but not all
4. Only one universal design (with storage facility) was available in all the shops
5. Their unique selling point was the sofa when expanded can "aaram se" accommodate two people to sleep, technically it is 6 feet by 6 feet.
6. They were selling curl-on mattresses along with the sofa-cum-bed, since the bed alone can not be obtained in the non-standard size. If something is non-standard or people are habituated to use non-standard items, then the shop owners are looting taking the disadvantage of the situation. If something has to be accommodated for a non-standard commodity, then it has to be customized. If there is customization, there is enough chance to cheat people.
7. I could not judge the quality of material used.
8. Biggest advantage I found: You can return the furniture after use and can get a resale value of 60~70% of the original price. One has to enquire thoroughly for this option for the shop.
9. Two biggest disadvantages:

1. All the furniture is unnecessarily costly (Rs.7000 -15000) and it is not worthy for that money.
2. The available design is STUPID.

10. The shop owners are successful in selling this stupid design claiming it as the best design available in the market. People are so naive to buy because they do not have other options and become so habituated to the fact that if the shop is not glamorous like some big malls, the prices will be cheap. You will be deceived solely on the basis of your assumption. Mind it.

Why the design of the sofa-cum-bed is stupid?
To obtain a correct sitting posture, a sofa should allow the users, to keep the feet firmly on the floor and to recline the user's back properly on the back portion of the sofa. Sounds cool! Actually my wife gave me this knowledge.

But all the furniture I saw was having this inherent flaw. If the back portion of the sofa is 3 feet away from the sitting edge, one can NOT keep one's feet in the ground. Otherwise your legs will be hanging in the air causing leg pain. To accommodate this posture the shop keeper will give you a brilliant idea of using thick pillows between you and the back portion of the sofa. Don't get carried away by that. He will try to convince you that every one is doing the same thing. Just because, a majority of the people is doing something, the same need not be followed. Apart from the additional expenses for you to bear, you will have to suffer from back pain too because of this peculiar arrangement.

Otherwise you have to sit in the cross -legged position ON the sofa, as you would like to sit for some feast in functions on the floor. Or you can stretch yourself in the sleep- straight position, causing inconvenience to other users.

Then I ditched all the local shops and started enquiring in bigger furniture shops. They include: Krome in Big Bazaar complex, Adorn in Chinchwad and two more big shops in Aundh and Godrej Lifespace.

My observations:

1. They have lot of attractive models. But as usual the prices are very high.
2. The furniture is worth buying only if there is a good discount
3. Discounts are many times deceiving; price after discount will be higher than the price before discount most of the times. This can be confirmed only when you track the price of the particular furniture. I was tracking price for one of the furniture in Krome. After diwali discount, the price was actually higher for a sofa-cum-bed set and this did not surprise me.
4. I understood their modus operandi. Most of the furniture is imported from countries like China and Malaysia.
5. Usually there is no guarantee or warranty even if you purchase the furniture for one lakh rupees.
6. Storage type sofa-cum-bed models are usually not available.

By that time I was tired of searching for my sofa-cum-bed model and I almost dropped the plan. Also my wife starting blaming me for not buying one particular model that we saw in Krome during this process. It was Rs.13, 500. I thought I would get some better offer else where. But my assumption was absolutely wrong. By the time, I finished my research and finalized to go for the one that we saw at Krome, that model was already sold. And the shop keeper told me that the price was highly discounted and they don't have any plan to provide such a heavy discount there after. Also he added that the models are unique and they can not guarantee the same model every time. My wife was very much disappointed and I started feeling inferior for not executing some thing on time.

Lessons learnt:
1. If you feel that the price is reasonable based on your research make your final decision in 2 or 3 days.
2. Since all the furniture is imported, the shop owners will buy only less numbers for a particular model. They rather try to include variety.

This entire story went for some 3 to 4 months in total. Mean while I promised my wife to get some furniture fitting our requirements, for her some how. And I opened a new branch of my search operations. I started searching in Internet for furniture. The information available was limited at least for the furniture available in India. Some of the sites I visited are: Durian, Godrej life space and other 2 ~3 designer furniture web sites. There is one particular type of block kind of furniture which is famous in Jaipur. But I did not like that personally.

Then I came across a wonderful site www.alibaba.com. I was astonished to see that site. It is an enterprise-to-enterprise, e-commerce website. I was happy to see numerous advertisements from furniture manufacturers in one single web page. I could see all the furniture that I saw in the big shops silently staring at me through the web pages. Then I decided buy furniture online from China directly. I was overwhelmed to see some of the promotional videos showing the factory setup and the process of furniture making. Also the prices displayed were 1/3rd or 2/3rd of the prices told by the furniture shop owners. But my enthusiasm was suddenly curbed. Because the customer can not directly get the items required by them through alibaba.com. Alibaba.com is not like e-bay. The import and payment procedure were so complex that only enterprises can afford to do such kind of activities. So I dropped that plan also.

Finally I came across one advertisement from Adorn shop, Chinchwad claiming 40% discount on all of their items. We went one day and saw one simple sofa-cum-bed which we were exactly looking for. The price was some where around 11,500. I asked for further discount and finally the price was settled at Rs 10,190 and I got the sofa the next day. And the final search for my sofa ended here.





Tip: Don't just go by the looks. Please sit or sleep on the furniture which you intend to buy. We usually forget to do this.