Pauline

Have read on here that all wooden furniture is expensive!!!

Would their be a market over their to ship out flat pack pine wooden furniture, or to open up my own joinery business and make my own pine wooden furniture eg. wardrobes, chest drawers etc?

John

MrsDagboy

Can you do a dining table for less than $399? Probably not worth it then!
SuperAmart

Or chests of drawers for less than these prices?

Chests of drawers

Also, most houses have built-in wardrobes, so I doubt that the market would be there for those. You possibly could make furniture, IF you can market it & advertise enough that people know who you are & where you are, you would get more business from that than from flatpack stuff for sure. People like individual & well made pieces, but usually find that its alot cheaper (& lets face it, most people ARE concerned about the price) & easier to go to a well known store. IMO, you would be better off shipping in antique furniture.

ABCDiamond

I think that previous post about wooden furniture being expensive should have emphasised "decent" wooden furniture.

Pine is cheap, as Mrs Dagboy's link probably shows. I didn't check it, but I have looked in SuperAmart myself. Even the salesmen there say the cheap pine stuff doesn't last.

However, if you can manufacter kitchen cabinets etc to fit, then that's one option. I have a friend in Sydney who went that way, and very soon had enough work for two people.

hevs

I ment decent stuff Mrs DB!
If you can make decent furniture, solid stuff, not glued together planks, then yes there is definatley a market.
Now anyone free to build me a kitchen next year

mr mover

the oz market is flooded ,with cheap indonesian furniture, but still a place for GOOD cabinet makers, my brother in law makes a livingout of renovating old pieces............. MM

MrsDagboy

LOL well hes talking about bringing in flatpack stuff, I dont categorize that as decent! .

My post did say that if he could make well made & individual pieces he could probably do ok, provided that he can market it. But to think that you can just knock stuff together & make a fortune because "wooden furniture is expensive" is kidding yourself .

ABC, you are correct, the cheap pine stuff doesnt last. But you can get very nice & very well made furniture from places other than Amart for not a huge amount more, their website just happened to be convenient . Their problem is they rely on volume, not quality (although not everything they sell is crap, just a large proportion ).

NickyC

Mr Mover is right - in Sydney there are endless ads in the paper for shops selling cheap teak furniture all imported from Indonesia. But just because it's teak does not mean it's good stuff - it's mostly poorly made and very badly finished.

There is a shop near me that buys up old stuff and repairs and re-finishes it and they do a roaring trade. We're not talking antiques but stuff from the 1920/30/40's. This part of Sydney was developed in the 1920's and furniture from that era is very popular.

I think the biggest problem in setting up a similar business would be finding enough old furniture in the first place. It's quite a popular hobby to renovate old furniture and you find that decent old stuff is snapped up pretty quick.

mr mover

[QUOTE]Originally posted by nickyc
.


A lot of this so called teak furniture,is actually Ramin, another timber from the rain forests of indonesia, it has a high moisture content, which is ok for the wetter parts of OZ, but we find down here in sth OZ, that after a couple of hot summers, the timber cracks and splits.................... MM

MrsDagboy

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mr mover
Hey MM, do you know anything about rubberwood? One place had a bit of stuff done in rubberwood, when I asked about it they gave me a sales pitch about how great it was, very good hardwood, long wearing etc, but Im interested in a second opinion

MrsDagboy

Just found this about it -

http://www.andamans.com/RubWd.htm

hevs

aha! you read it better than me, i missed the "flat pack" bit!

mr mover

looks intresting , but might be a bit on the soft side........... MM