I have read up on Universal Furniture (in this case, the Pennsylvania House "name" is used for the collection I am interested in). I see that it is made in China, and not typically considered the best quality.

The set in question is the "New Heritage" collection, and is tagged as "Simply Solid". It is made of solid cherry (drawer fronts, tops, etc). Sides on a few pieces seemed to possibly be cherry veneer over solids. Drawers have English dovetails, and drawer sides/bottoms are sanded/sealed/stained/etc (see attached pages for construction details.)

I am usually a stickler for quality, and NO furniture that I have looked at comes close to the quality of my parents' 1970s/1980s solid wood furniture. Even my parents late 1980s Ethan Allen piece is MUCH better than what is currently in Ethan Allen. That said, the Universal New Heritage collection has been my fiancee and I's favorite so far in terms of style, and the quality of it in person at the store actually seems pretty good (compared to what else is out there today).

What exactly is so bad about this furniture, and how long can it be expected to last? We saw this set at Raymour and Flanigan, and while a lot of what they had seemed to be petty lousy quality, this set actually seemed much better than the most of what they had. In fact, the quality was as good or better than what we saw at Thomasville, where they were asking 7-12k for their bedroom sets! This New Heritage set would cost us about $2k or so for a 4 piece Queen set, and around $2900 or so for a 5 piece set (5 piece would be bed, nightstand, dresser, mirror, and door chest). In this price-range (~3k for a 4-5 piece queen bedroom set) what other options would we have in terms of NEW furniture (would consider going used for dining furniture, but not bedroom)? Is it just lack of snob appeal we are talking about here, or lack of "MADE IN USA" pride, or am I missing something? Clearly, the quality of furniture being made today is not what it was 20-30 years ago...but we felt that this set stacked up favorably to what is out there today. What do you guys think?

Additional Link: New Heritage fact sheet from Universal's website:

http://www.universalfurniture.com/NewHeritageBR/Documents/NewHeritageBR_02A_Full.asp

thanks!!

Looks decent...but the Chinese factor still remains...

Think of it as this. Someone comes up to you and says, can you make this product cheap. My price point is however low and that's what I need in order to get so and so's business. It all starts off some where, and that's with the US companies that want to sell more bulk which makes the vendors have to lower their prices in order to compete. They go to the factories and present projects with super low price points and what can the factory do? Not take the order and have their competitor take it or take up the order and meet the price points by using worse quality material or less material etc.

It's a cycle...the US consumers are at the forefront of it...not all but the majority. We want to pay less, we get worse quality.

End of story.

Speedster - good points. Do you feel that this is the case w. the Universal/Penn House set I posted above, or do you feel that it is quality?

http://www.raymourflanigan.com/catalog/details.asp?ID=100090
If you click on the detail and zoom in, you'll see that some of the drawers have pretty sizeable knots. In the store there were knots, but I felt they added to the character. The one in the pic has even more though.

Thanks!

Does anyone have any general comments on this furniture or answers to my latest questions?

Thanks a lot!!