Hello Everyone:
As many of you know I am the President and founder of EZ Furniture Assembly and Interior Innovations, and NYC Handyman INC. I started this companies myself with almost nothing but a few screwdrivers and a passion to succeed. Well, I can't believe we're going on 3 years and I have learned so much about every RTA (Ready To Assemble) company & their products. I have over 500 books related to furniture assembly, interior decorating, handyman tasks, remodeling projects, etc, and have become what many have called an expert in the industry. However, as I have mentioned several times that we basically follow the flow of general contracting in respect to our months of overwhelming appointments to months like now where we have to call our phone just to make sure it's working. Anyway, to date I have seven full-time technicians with a minimum of 5 years direct experience. I spent most of my time the last few years multitasking where I was doing everything from Project Manager, lead technician, Lone Technician, Accountant, and Customer service Rep. However, I dropped the ball in obtaining commercial accounts to keep us working in these dead months. Anyway, that is another story which should be interesting. The title of this story is " CB2 id Not the Quality of Crate and Barrel", so that's what I intend to write about. I think!
Anyway, all of my technicians work on a piece rate where we bid the price and they receive a % of the total. The faster they do the jobs the more money they make, but they are not paid a cent for any call backs that are a result of their workmanship. Thank God I have a great crew who very rarely gets a call back and when they do it is normally either a result of something they did, like put their bowling balls on a lack shelf from Ikea that is only attached to sheetrock and meant to hold only up to 10 Lbs. There are some companies that our company refuses to do and refers them to other assembly services, most are from Target and Walmart. They sell the same name products with a name that escapes me right now, but we have had nothing but trouble from their furniture because it is so cheap and poorly made I would actually advise the customer to return the item and spend the extra $50 bucks at ABC store and get a quality product. These products would come damaged, missing parts, made of the cheapest particle board, and use plastic slides for the drawers which never lined up with the holes or worked correctly. The bottom line was I felt in the beginning that we will do every job no matter the profit as long as we got our name out there and showed the public the quality workmanship we provided. Well, that didn't last long nor did many great technicians because they would be sent to do a job that required the assembly of two computer desks and one dresser, but what would normally take them 3 hours at most was taking that and sometimes more per piece. I had guys getting home three O'clock in the morning after working 17 hours and making only$70.00 with their % so i ended up giving them the entire amount so the company was making nothing. We were losing money!! I made a decision that we would no longer accept any assembly jobs from either target or Walmart except Walmarts outdoor swingsets and playsets that are high quality.
This brings me to the story about CB2. I have always recommended Crate & Barrel and felt that they made a top quality product that would last many moves and whatever else came it's way. They would sometimes use real wood or MDF ( Medium Density Fiberboard ) which many people get confused with " Fake Wood " or particle board, but in reality a good quality MDF can be much better than a solid wood piece for many reasons that I won't get into today, but believe me if you do your homework you will see why. Finally.... about 2 weeks ago we got a call to assemble a CB2 biscuit low dresser which was priced quite high, but you normally get what you pay for. Since it is so slow i decided to do the job myself because I hadn't done any of the CB2 products and secondly I needed the money. So I set the appointment and arrived at the customers home and was shown to the area they wished to have the dressers assembled. Each dresser was made up of two boxes which were heavy as hell which is a good sign of quality MDF. I opened the boxes which were not stapled but glued with a hot glue gun and made my job of opening the boxes pure hell because I couldn't just run the razor knife down the side in fear of scratching the wood. I finally got it opened and separated each piece which had no numbering or marking to identify which was which, but when you have been doing this as long as i have you really don't need them. I finally found the directions, only they were for a biscuit dresser that was not at all the same but they all work on the same concept. So I always start by inserting my cam screws and locks first and then put the puzzle together. This is my method others guys have their own. I am cookin' along and am down to 4 cam locks which is enough to do 2 more pieces but I had 6 left? Hmmmmmmmmm. So as I explained they had given the wrong directions which normally wouldn't matter except the two main pieces had about 20 holes each for cam screws but in reality after trial and error found they only took 8 each. Why might you ask, my guess is that like their competition many of their pieces are versatile and what makes a top to a dresser here might be the wall to an entertainment center elsewhere. After about 2 hours I completed the first unit and was left with extra pieces which is not a good sign, but they were actually doubles of 2 drawer sides that couldn't go anywhere if they wanted to because there was no room on the drawers and no more hardware. I inspected the piece and noticed that every piece had extra holes for cam screws and locks and some dowels. I went ahead and put the second one together with ease because I already finished CB2 101 an hour and a half ago. I pointed out the extra pieces and all the extra parts and the worst in which I forget to tell you, the bottom of the drawers were made out of what Crate and Barrel sometimes uses for a back piece because it holds no weight and is really just seen from the inside with the back against the wall. This is paperboard which is at best 1/8" think which they were kind enough to take to pieces glue them together and use them as the bottom of the drawers. I put my screw gun in as an example of the poor materials used and almost snapped the it. I also forgot to tell you that all of the drawer bottoms were short which showed about 1/16 of an " of peek through space which i recommended my customer's buy either an epoxy of black silicone to match and fill in the space in each drawer. Then they explained that's why it must have been so cheap at CB2 compared to the products at C and B.
My conclusion is this, which might be wrong so don't hold me to it. But it is my belief that CB2 which is a division of C and B is given last years leftovers, returns, damaged furniture and retain the good pieces, and maybe even extra stock and use this material to make CB2 furniture. I mean I see it at Ikea all the time where they use the side panel of a Pax unit in a entertainment center and a ton of other things, but they don't send extra pieces or have a unit with 3 dozen extra holes with the wrong directions. All b.s. aside, if they were able to figure it out and get it together it would take them at least 20 hours, broken up after work and weekends your looking two weeks of all their spare time assembling 2 dressers! That's nuts! C and B has a good idea to recycle and reuse their unsold furniture at a lower price by creating a separate division and utilizing what they already have, but this was not thought out all the way through and even though it is a separate entity everyone associates CB2 with C and B and with just plain out poor thought, workmanship, and respect for their name and product is just terrible for lack of a better word even if the furniture is cheaper, it's junk with their name associated with it. I seriously think it would have been much better if they opened up outlets that sold last years unsold, damaged, or returned furniture at lower prices then the customer would know what they were buying and do their best to separate the weeds from the flowers. But when you pay a nice penny for what you presume to be just a different style of C and B when it's nothing more than recycled leftovers, and returns, that's just wrong!
If you have experienced the same issues as me i would love to hear from you. And if you disagree i want your opinion too! I just simply drew a conclusion on what I saw and used my years of marketing and furniture assembly experience to arrive at my conclusion.
Christopher Purnell
EZ Furniture Assembly & Interior Innovations, LLC
