It's Final! TARGET Furniture is the Worst!!!

I have said it before, but I gave them another chance this weekend only to see their online furniture is even worse than what they sell at their stores. As the President of New York City's largest Professional Assembly Service it is hard to turn a customer away which will in turn leave a bad taste in their mouth thinking we only assemble high end pieces. That is not how I want my company to be viewed, but their has to be a time when you say enough is enough. When I first launched this company several years ago I thought IKEA was the bottom of the barrel compared to some of the other retailers. However, in time I found that for the most part IKEA was a good quality product, well made, and fairly priced. Target however, sells furniture that is poorly made, poorly handled, and sold at very unreasonable prices considering most of the furniture is coming out of China. I cannot say what they paid for the cherry "Finish" executive desk I agreed to have a technician assemble in which the customer paid $379.99 for, but I do know that a small company like myself can purchase an entire kitchen that was made in China from a dealer in the states for under $400.00! Now considering the company that resells these kitchen cabinets is not a big operation they have to be making at least 100% mark up on the kitchens, so I am guessing Target might mark up their furniture somewhere around 700%! In any event I was called to the customers home by my technician who came 2 hours to assemble the desk only to open the box and see that it was completely broken with chunks of the MDF ( Medium Density Fiberboard) that was the top amongst the other pieces scattered like saw dust. I immediately explained to the customer that we need to take pictures and call Target and report this matter, and assured her we would provide an affidavit to the company if need be. She contacted Target and put me on the phone with their customer service representative who I give credit to for being very nice and understanding. I explained who I was, our company, and the serious damage that had occurred to the customers article either in route from China, their warehouse, or the delivery service in which delivered it. I explained that we had pictures and by this time she must have pulled up our bio online and began to ask questions about our services that she could have only known by viewing our website. In any event when it was all said in done the customer is being shipped a new desk minus $40.00 for her troubles and we agreed to return a second time in the hopes that we can assemble the desk for her. Our minimum service fee is $60.00 which should be applied since it was not our fault the product was damaged nor inspected prior to our arrival, but I just couldn't find it in my heart to charge her. I guess that is what separates us from the big national companies who would have already had her credit card # and charged the fee. Now on our website we have a notice that clearly states we will no longer be assembling Target furniture and the reasons why. In a way I feel as if we are hurting our reputation and possibly bottom line by doing this, but Target furniture is just that bad that I had to take such a drastic measure because not one of my technicians will take a Target job.


Do you own target furniture? Was it damaged or not what you expected? Did the assembly process go easy? Either way please let us know so we can decide if we should begin contacting other Professional Companies and pull together to ensure Target starts selling better quality furniture.

TARGET Furniture is Just Junk!

I am sorry to say this about Target because overall I like the store and it's prices. But when it comes to their furniture it basically boils down to you getting what you pay for. In the furniture assembly business you will always find a kink in every manufacturer's pieces. However, the furniture that Target is purchasing is just to the point of not being able to be assembed.

We are New York City's #1 provider of professional assembly and we have assembled over 10,000 pieces of furniture in 2007. Many stores have seen the demand for RTA (Ready To Assemble) furniture and have made it a point to add this product line to their stores. However, I believe that furniture should be left to furniture retailers, such as computers to electronic dealers. Why? Because they are able to look beyond the price and know what they are getting, and what is a fair price. Most of the RTA furniture you find in Target and other large retail chains is from China and is very poorly made using the cheapest materials. Till today we never made a concious decision to stop assembly of a certain product because we were always able to suck up the issues it may have and move on.

However, at our weekly meeting it brought up by all our technicians that the furniture coming from Target is of the poorest quality and it is actually making us not only lose money but leave a bad taste in the customers mouth when after several hours we tell them that there is no way we can assemble this particular piece because the pre-drilled holes are off by 1", or they sent you two left side panels instead of one left and one right. What do we do, charge the customer for our time? I guess some companies would and do, but we have decided that such an act would only add insult to injury. For a year we have been working on this furniture only in the hope that they would correct their errors in time. To date there have been no changes made and we have decided that we will no longer be assembling Target furniture until they find new suppliers and provide their customers with better quality furniture. I have spoken with several other companies throughout the United States and they have already made the decision to stop the assembly of Target furniture until they upgrade their products. The worst part is that the furniture there is not being sold at super low prices, and most people could buy the same piece at Ikea or Crate & Barrel for the same price or a few dollars more and receive much better quality.

If you have purchased furniture from Target and found it to be junk or great, either way please let us know how you feel.

Eric Davis
General Manager
EZ Furniture Assembly & Interior Innovations

IKEA Vs. Target Furniture

Lots of lower end furniture, like from Target & Ikea are made from particle board covered with a thin sheet of veneer wood or cheap soft woods like pine. The particle board can, over time, buckle, warp or sag.

The joints with soft woods are weak & that's when you tend to get wobbly furniture after lots of usage. Also the joints themselves are constructed cheaply, just two pieces butted together at a 90 degree angle & screwed together. Sometimes, without even metal anchors. No dovetail joints or tongue & groove joints as in higher end, heirloom furniture made of hardwoods.

However, we have been in the professional assembly bussiness for numerous years and even though there are much better RTA (Ready To Assemble) furniture available on the market, IKEA is a shining star compared to the products Target sells. There is only word that can describe it.....Junk!

Our New York City office has a total of between 10 and 12 certified technicians on call to serve the 5 bouroughs and Long Island. When they complete a job they make notes as to how the product was constructed,Assembly Time missing parts, damaged, holes line up, structurally sound upon completion etc. This helps us determine what the actual time it takes for an experienced technician to assemble a particular piece. It's more or less like a labor manual that all body shops use to determine the costs to do a particular job.

However, in the Furniture Assembly industry, I'm speaking for professional companies that are licensed,insured,certified, and have technicians who have years of construction,remodeling, or furniture assembly experience. Not some ad on Craigslist where siome guy name John says " Will aseemble anyting from ikea or wherever. Cheap! Call my cell phone" No, I am talking about companies that pay rent,taxes,insurance, etc. Anyway, being the founder & president of EZ Furniture Assembly & Interior Innovations, LLC I am forced to wear many hats. One being the marketing and research of the products we assemble.

I Have never been a big fan of all of IKEA's furniture but have found some diamonds in the rough and found their kitchen cabinetry to be equal in standards compared to other stock kitchen manufactuers but available for purchase at a fair price. Target on the other hand is junk! This morning I have been going over the reports from our technicians in the last two months and found that out of the 18 Target assembly jobs we took on we lost money on every one and 7 seperate technicians rated the quality a zero on a scale from one to ten! We lose money because professional companies normally charge 1/3 of the retail price of the piece. If the entertainment center that sells at Ikea for $500.00 is only $200.00 at Target we can only charge the 1/3 which equals out to about $66.00 plus tax. Now for that $66.00 it takes our technician 4 hours to assemble it because he had to make alterations, add support braces etc. That is what $16.25 per hour plus the company pays the technician damn near that much per hour and some even more, we lose! We post our rate chart on our website so it's hard to say to someone that bought a $100.00 dresser from Target that we would normally have to charge you our lowest service charge of $60.00, but since it is NO NAME from Target we're going to have to charge you a hundred and can';t guarantee that the piece will be assembled as it appeared online because their products are very poorly made. The first thing a potential customer is going to think is we are trying to take them for more money, we're a scam, or whatever else you can bet it wouldn't be good.Notes ranged from missing parts, prefab holes off by as much as on inch which required a technician to either get the customers written approval to corect theior errors or have the customer return the items back to Target. Ikea uses Tremand to inspect and grade each of their products prior to placing them on the floor for sale and work out any issues found in their inspection. I am thouroughly convinced that Target had no such 3rd party to assemble, inspect, and evaluate their furniture which has lead to their sales of JUNK fuirniture. Many people who call usthought they could do the assembly themselves and quicly foundout they couldn't. However, if you have purchased furniture from Target their is not a company in operation that can assemble their furniture products without making severe alterations. My advice to EVERYONE is stay away from Target furniture!!!!

I am very seriously contemplating posting a note on our website stating that we no longer assemble Target furniture. Am I alone on this one or do other people find Target furniture to be junk? Please call us or post your comments we would love to hear from you.