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.