YorkshireMartin":1l39vz8p said:
Many people are conditioned to buy what I consider junk, including me. Perhaps also, they simply want to change the look of their house frequently, which for most rules out spending thousands on a single hand crafted item. Even then, I'd say people struggle to justify anything priced higher than ikea, who, lets be honest, set the bar for the masses. Thats where the serious money is spent.
As much as anything, taste has changed.
The lavish baroque feel of 17th and 18th century furniture slowly faded from fashion to the altogether less objectionably ostentatious but still artfully detailed feel of the more accomplished arts and crafts work, and the modernist designers took cues from Bauhaus, the shakers, the oriental tradition and anywhere else clean lines and simple geometric forms could be seen and really ran with "less is more" which also lends itself well to manufacturing en mass...
People still want quality, look at how OakFunitureLand market themselves, they just don't know where to find it anymore...
I'd also challenge the assertation that people don't want to buy "furniture for life" one of my colleagues splashed out £3k on a pair of solid elm cabinets with the intention that "it will see me out", he's 29... Another of my colleagues was chatting to me whilst I was sketching ornate tables with cabriole legs in my lunch break, and commented that 'I'd love to have something like that, but I can't afford to" a cursory visit to ebay later, she's now working out exactly what features and style she'd like, she's 25 and otherwise a dedicated follower of fashion.
My experience is that younger not-nearly-as-affluent-as-they'd-have-been-a-generation-ago professionals are increasingly looking to develop an individual style/taste and invest themselves in it both financially and emotionally, in part because it builds in to an increasingly important sense of self and partially because they know that they aren't likely to be in a position to keep buying disposable but ultimately expensive stuff over and over again in the model their parents were able to, so looking to a more 'classic' style insulates them from fashionable things rapidly becoming dated.
Edit:
custard":1l39vz8p said:
YorkshireMartin":1l39vz8p said:
To make a lot of money in any business, you need to produce complete tat...a genuine quality oriented business is never going to see the same level of success.
Apple? BMW? Lie Nielsen?
There are many reasons bespoke furniture is a low profit business, but to claim that high quality is always a bad business strategy is a bit too simplistic.
If I might be so bold as to state the bleeding obvious...
What separates yourself and makers like yourself from BMW (for instance) is a brand identity...
Would it be crazy to think that the individual makers and small businesses that comprise the backbone of bespoke furniture in the UK could get together, pool resources and work with one of the Guilds or Industry Organisations* to form a unifying brand for traditionally made British furniture?
A brand identity directing people to look for the right people, and a targeted advertising campaign to make people aware that they can actually buy bespoke furniture, that it doesn't have to be outside their price range** and to make doing so an aspirational goal for them (just like owning a Beemer or IPhone or LN plane is).
*
Wood for Good, the British Woodworking Federation, the Institute of Carpenters and the Guild of Master Craftsmen all spring to mind.
**
I remain flabbergasted by some of the discussions on here of pricing and commerciality reavealing just how inexpensively a lot of the more uncomplicated items of bespoke furniture are sold, (relative to the amount of effort and thought put in by the maker), certainly those uncomplicated bits of furniture are not selling for an unreasonable amount more than OakFurnitureLand or DFS charge for their top-end furniture, and would seem positively reasonable when set against prices for (exquisitely) factory-made repro furniture in specialist retailers like Pondsford or Ward Bros.