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Don't Waste Your Weekend Searching For a Sofa at Furniture Sales

30.10.2006 14:07 Home And Garden

May 27, 2005 - A custom upholstered sofa in a box for $299 that looks like it cost a grand? Not possible you say? It is with a completely new furniture category: ready-to-assemble (RTA) upholstered furniture. It's not only comfortable, with a five-year warranty, and the same quality fabric as some of the best-known furniture brands, but also sports unheard of extras even James Bond would admire. Features like "secret" storage under the cushions to secure sprawling CD/DVD/magazine collections, as well as the ability to change "skins," that is fabrics, at a moment's notice to enhance mood, be it for a night or to combine furniture down the road.

Best of all, it's deliverable to your door in days without slogging through endless furniture showrooms, and will easily fit through narrow halls, doors, and stairs.

For too long, sofa shoppers looking for quality, comfort, value, choice, and convenience have had nowhere to turn. At one end, high priced showrooms and department stores have charged full retail markups, with long waits for special orders and tacked on delivery charges. At the other end, furniture discounters have offered either low price or quality, with "a take it or leave it mentality" and little choice in style or fabric. Consumers with narrow doors, halls, or stairs were in for the rudest shock of all when sofas they just purchased simply didn't fit or got damaged while lugging them into place.

Fortunately, Home Reserve, a Fort Wayne-based furniture manufacturer has created a completely new category of furniture: ready-to-assemble (RTA) upholstered furniture. Made with lean manufacturing techniques and sold directly to customers via the Internet, this new furniture category not only matches the quality of national brand names, but also does so with unheard of choice, savings, convenience, and customer service. Though the people behind Home Reserve have been manufacturing furniture for four generations and their award-winning designs have been seen on TV shows such as ER and Touched by an Angel, their $299 sofa with custom choice of 60 fabrics is just half the typical $600 to $800 charged in retail showrooms.

Those needing a safe place to store CDs, DVDs, or other collections that tend to pile up and scatter will find that a Home Reserve sofa can neatly solve the problem. A single sofa, in fact, has enough hidden storage space under the cushions to stow 65 CDs, 15 videos, 22 books, 3 pillows, 1 blanket, and 10 action heroes. Beneath the cushions, wood lids and bottoms keep your secret stash intact even when the sofa is moved, while providing dust protection.

The company uses the same fabrics as some of the best-known furniture brands in the country, with fabric selections including wool, cotton, acrylic, and the current industry "hottie," microfiber, noted for its suede-like texture and excellent wear-ability, clean-ability, and anti-staining properties. Home Reserve's website allows shoppers to see what the furniture will look like with a particular fabric by simply clicking on it.

Because the company designs and constructs furniture itself from the ground up, it provides buyers with the unique ability to change a complete fabric cover, or "skin," by simply removing one from the frame and replacing it with a new one. This gives you the ability to instantly change a room's mood to impress, or to change the sofa's look to match d cor should a move or new furniture combination be necessary.

Under the company's unique fabric exchange program, any fabric can be removed from the frame, and exchanged for another - without returning the entire sofa - within 30 days. With the company's "no hassle" guaranty, furniture can also be returned for any reason within 30 days for a full refund of purchase price.

Since this new generation of precision-cut RTA furniture ships by UPS in boxes no heavier than 70 lbs., they're easily carried up stairs, through narrow doors and halls to their final destinations, for about half the cost of typical furniture delivery. They're also trackable and quickly delivered within 5 to 10 business days anywhere in the US.

For assembly, only a screwdriver is needed, with no glue necessary. The frame is precision cut by computer, and each piece has cut-out numbers for easy to follow instructions. The furniture frames are certified for strength under a government test program developed by Purdue University. To pass, each frame had to endure a 200 lb. weight dropped 125,000 times on the seat, equal to 60 years of use; 100 lbs. pressed to the back 250,000 times, equal to 120 years of use; and 75 lbs. applied to the arms 125,000 times, equal to 60 years of use.

"Anyone looking for quality, upholstered furniture for half the price of what they'd spend elsewhere, without delivery hassles or sales pressure, should look into purchasing RTA upholstered furniture online," concludes John Vessely, who purchased a sofa, chair, and ottoman for his Valley Stream, New York home.
For more info on Home Reserve sofas or other ready-to-assemble furniture items, visit www.homereserve.com on the Internet; email customerservice@homereserve.com; call 800-482-2712; or write to them at 3015 Cannongate Drive, Fort Wayne, Indiana 46808.

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