About the Owner/Author

Jeff Frank is a 50-year veteran of the furniture industry. He has worked directly with hundreds of manufacturers, retailers, designers, and suppliers.

Jeff’s company, Simplicity Sofas, founded in 2007, was the first furniture manufacturer with 100% online sales. (This was several years before Amazon and Wayfair proved that furniture could be sold successfully online.)

Simplicity Sofas was awarded the $20,000 Grand Prize in a 2012 nationwide competition for “Most Innovative U.S. Small Business.”

In March 2022, Jeff retired from Simplicity Sofas after 15 years to devote full time to this Insider’s Guide to Furniture blog and review site.

Over his career, Jeff has been directly involved in all aspects of furniture manufacturing, retailing (both stores and online), and product design.

His origins in the furniture industry date back to 1976, hired as Sales Manager for a 1 person furniture department in a discount department store.

Two years later, one of the Top 50 furniture retail chains in the U.S. hired Jeff as one of their corporate buyers.

Over an 8-year period, Jeff negotiated and purchased over $200 million of furniture and mattresses from hundreds of large & small furniture manufacturers.

Duties as a buyer included price negotiation, setting selling prices, advertising, customer service, and much more.

The retail chain Jeff worked for was especially known for buying and selling close-out and overstocked merchandise at deep discounts.

Subsequently, Jeff became a partner in a Consulting firm, specializing in selling a wide range of products to the U.S. Government.

Jeff recruited and managed the firm’s furniture clients, averaging over $15 million in annual sales. Clients included Ethan Allen, Flexsteel, Bernhardt, Bassett, and Pulaski.

In 1990, Jeff came up with an idea for a new type of furniture to fill a vacant product niche – high-end seating that would fit through narrow doors and stairways where other high-quality furniture could not go.

IKEA and its competitors sold huge quantities of low end RTA (Ready to Assemble) seating that fit through narrow spaces, but RTA sofas typically sold for $299 to $599.

In 1990, Ready to Assemble sofas, priced above $799, that fit through narrow doors and stairways, were almost non-existent.

Working with two partners, Jeff’s team invented a new type of furniture, and was awarded 5 patents.

The 5 patents were licensed to Masco, the world’s largest home furnishings manufacturer in 1990.

Masco owned 20 well-known furniture brands at that time, including Henredon, Drexel-Heritage, Lexington, Universal, Maitland Smith, etc.

Masco created a new brand, Simply Together, to make and sell the furniture created by Jeff’s design team.

Over a 10-year period, Simply Together sold more than $40 million of furniture.

In 2005, Jeff put together another design team, which was awarded 2 additional patents.

The result was a new brand, Simplicity Sofas, which opened two years later, in the midst of the Recession, under Jeff’s ownership.

Simplicity Sofas is still in business, making and selling high end Ready to Assemble sofas, sectionals and sleepers in the $2000 to $10,000+ price range.

Simplicity Sofas was the first Direct-to-Consumer furniture manufacturer to sell exclusively online.

The company was founded in 2007. At that time, Amazon and Wayfair had not yet popularized the concept of online furniture sales.

Jeff retired from Simplicity Sofas in March 2022 to devote full time to developing this Insiders Guide to Furniture blog.

Over his long career, Jeff acquired a unique overall view of the furniture industry.

This includes a detailed knowledge of furniture construction, design & quality, cost analysis, retail marketing strategies, customer service practices and much more.

Jeff has published over 2000 furniture-related articles and reviews, viewed by more than 2 million readers, over the past 20 years.

What is the

Insiders Guide to Furniture?

Do you really get what you pay for!

The statement, “You get what you pay for!” is often heard throughout the furniture industry.

It’s constantly repeated by customers who heard it from salespeople and read it in online reviews and articles.

While “You get what you pay for!” is often true for expensive custom-built furniture, it can be dangerously unreliable when applied to low and mid-range upholstered furniture.

Shoppers can easily spend thousands of dollars buying sofas and sectionals that fall apart after just a few years.

Prior to 2010, affordable mid-range quality seating often lasted 10 years and more.

Today, the vast majority of affordable seating (sofas priced under $3000 and sectionals priced under $6000) is intentionally designed to last only half as long.

It’s almost impossible for non-expert shoppers (and many industry professionals) to compare the quality, durability, and value of look-alike sofas and sectionals.

Furniture manufacturers are often capable of producing products at multiple levels of quality and value.

“Store brands” that consist of products from multiple manufacturers are even harder to compare.

Price is frequently a poor indicator of comparative quality and value.

The Insider’s Guide To Furniture was created to help its readers avoid expensive furniture shopping mistakes.

It provides detailed information and answers to all your questions about furniture and home furnishings.

IGF features over 400 articles on furniture-related topics, including:

• Detailed brand & individual product quality comparisons
• Manufacturing construction, product design, & cost analysis
• Retail advertising & pricing strategies
• Confusing & contradictory furniture industry terminology

The articles, answers, and opinions given in this blog are based on my 50 years working with hundreds of furniture manufacturers and retailers.

Thousands of articles are published every year on various furniture topics.

The majority are written by industry professionals who work primarily with expensive high end furniture brands, affordable only to the top 20% of consumers.

Articles written by “high end experts” about high end furniture are irrelevant and highly confusing for the 80% of shoppers who cannot afford to buy top-of-the-line quality.

For example, the terminology, “solid wood frame” has completely different definitions, depending on whether you’re describing a sofa priced at $1000, $2500, or $5000.

Reviews are often written by individuals with very limited knowledge. Many are “influencers” who are paid to refer their readers to specific brands or websites.

As quality has declined, consumers have become more and more concerned about how their furniture is built and how long it will last.

Salespeople are paid to sell, not provide accurate information. Even when they are well-intentioned, salespeople have absolutely no knowledge about competitive products they do not personally sell.

Websites often provide product descriptions that are intentionally vague and misleading. Often, important specifications are simply omitted.

The Insiders Guide to Furniture was created to demystify the furniture buying experience and to help shoppers avoid costly mistakes.

Please send me your questions. I respond to most questions within 24 hours.

Jeff Frank