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Comment by Matthias247 | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t that model the same in normal furniture shops? When I visited the bigger ones (XXXL Lutz chain in Germany) they always had lots of furniture under their in-house brands, which I guess is relabeled other stuff. More funky then the names is the pricing, because it’s always reduced. You will never see anything for full price, it will always be labeled with something like 30-50% off. Which however just reflects real market value. that’s actually the thing I like most about Ikea. Pricing and product range are stable.

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But with the physical store you can walk into the showroom and get a feel for whether a couch is a cheap because it’s a piece of garbage or if it’s a good deal on a piece of solid furniture.

Not with 100 percent certainly, but a lot better than some staged photos on a website.

I'm not familiar with XXXL Lutz, but it sounds like it's a bit like Wayfair, Overstock, Target, etc.? Home24.de is another white-labeling brand in Germany. Much of Home24's stuff can also be found on Wayfair and elsewhere.

Most retail furniture stores in the US (Blu Dot, Room and Board, West Elm, Herman Miller, Vitra, Knoll, Steelcase, etc.) either design their own furniture in-house or have name-brand designers (e.g. Eames, Jasper Morrison, etc.) they collaborate with. (Sometimes the manufacturer also produces their own "generic" white-labeled versions; for example, the factory that makes Knoll sofas apparently also makes identical/near-identical no-name sofas that are sold under different brand names at much, much lower prices, and if you have some inside information you can find out where to get these.)

Then there are high-end retailers like DWR, YLiving, Lumens, etc. that are more like Amazon in that they mostly don't rely on white-labeling.

My experience with Hoeffner, XXXL, Moebel Kraft et al tells me that either you go for a premium price point or you will inevitably buy crap. But then, I think Ikea has more experience in producing cheap crap so that you get a better deal with Ikea furniture instead of the cheap stuff from XXXL.

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