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These days in 2013, many interior designers, furniture enthusiasts and home owners are increasingly choosing bespoke furniture for their homes and their client's homes for several key reasons. This article will explore those reasons and identify which of these are the key drivers of the industry. Firstly, custom furniture can attribute it's success in the market place due to improvements in technology when it comes to hand made manufacturing methods. It may seem odd, but it is in fact enhancements in computer technology that have allowed hand made products to improve in quality at a better rate than machine made products. But why is this? Essentially, it is down to the aims and objectives of large manufacturing businesses and research and development centres. For much of the twentieth century, manufacturing has focussed on reducing costs and increasing production volume. Now, in the early twenty first century, this approach is saturated, and rising costs of raw materials are holding back price. It has come to a point where the materials of a product account for around 70-80% of the wholesale price of the unit! This is because the actual manufacturing process is now so cheap, it doesn't have much an effect on price. So why has custom furniture seen such an upsurge in popularity? Where before high price was a reason that people didn't buy products, now, people don't buy products due to substandard quality. With high quality products available at reasonable prices, people are opting to choose these over low priced and low quality alternatives. Bespoke products such as tables, chairs and sofas are now able to come in at an affordable price, which customers appreciate in order to avoid cheap goods which do not correctly serve their purpose. Better manufacturing methods mean that rather than mass produce items in order to create low costs, lea manufacturing techniques have been embraced, which not only cut costs of low volume products, but also increase quality. These methods were pioneered by the well known car manufacturer Toyota in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It seems like an odd link, but that piece of custom furniture in your lounge owes a lot to the motor vehicle! So why else has custom furniture emerged as a popular product? Changes in taste is one of those reasons. Now, since the economic downturn, consumers want reassurance that they have not been badly affected and desire a bit of luxury amidst cutbacks. People value quality purchases, only make less of them than before. Rather than buy lots of cheap goods, the recession has encouraged people to think deeply about purchases. If well made custom furniture is two times more expensive than cheap furniture but can last ten times longer, the higher priced item is a smarter purchase decision. This attitude is especially prevalent among the middle classes across the world.
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