Normally if a local store is not competitive, there are one of two reasons: 1) The store owner has not adapted to current market conditions. Quite simply, as the profit margins move downward - and they have - they have not revised their business structure to capture sales that would otherwise go to out-of-area dealers. Some store owners insist on adhering to a margin-based price structure and will not adjust. The smart businessman NEVER lets a customer walk out to do business out-of-area. I know a number of store owners who are hard-headed and won't adapt. Its up to you, their local customer, to bring in a price quote and show them that they need to match it or you'll go elsewhere. If enough customers do that, they'll get the message. But if you never tell them, then they don't know. 2) Some furniture makers have a 2-tier price structure. Small stores don't get as large a discount from the maker as larger ones do. Typically its based on dollar-volume sold, or number of pieces put on the floor. So there is a chance that within a certain brand line that you local dealer is paying more for the goods than a larger, out-of-state discounter. This happens to me with Southwood Furniture as an example. My cost basis is 10 % less than the big store in the next county because they do more volume by accident than I do working hard at it. Still they get the volume price and I don't. Nevertheless, I adapt (being a savvy dealer!) and match price or go under them everyday. It results in thin margins, and it does not exactly make me want to invest in a lot of their product for the floor. Personally, I think it a bad policy from the makers as it tends to keep the little guys small regardless of how hard they work for the brand and limits floor exposure for their dealership network. Walk your best price into your local dealer and tell them in no uncertain terms they need to beat it. See what happens! Keep in mind however, that local sales tax is not something that your hometown store cannot waive and should be factored out when price shopping (the flip side of this is that these taxes do come back into your community infrastructure when you buy locally). Duane Collie

I have a recliner chair and recliner (2) sofa from Palliser. Its now about 8 years old. It is all leather, even the sides and back. The sofa has worn well - no tell tale worn areas (that's basically where I sit). However, the recliner has areas where the leather has "peeled". It kinda looks like what your skin does when you get a sunburn if you know what I mean. The area is on the part of the recliner where my husband puts his elbows and on the part where the back of his thighs just above the knees would rub the recliner. I should have called the place I bought it from when it first started happening but I didn't. I don't know if they would have done anything about it or not. The warranty was 5 years on materials and this probably started happening just before that. It's not bad but you can tell the difference from the condition of the sofa and the recliner. Hubby does "really use" his recliner, throws his legs over the arms of it and sits on the floor in front of it and leans back on the same area that his thighs would rub on it. Not sure if the leather was faulty on that piece or if its the "normal wear and tear". I wouldn't consider it abused by any means such as kids being on it would cause problems. The structure of the pieces are solid, heavy and the mechanisms work great. We were told that you should use the recliner lever to lower and raise the footrest and not to just push on the footrest,so we make sure we use it correctly. Quality wise, structure wise, I think its a good company. I am at fault for not following through with the wear problem. I might have been able to have it repaired or replaced when it first started happening. Now I know its too late to do anything about it.

I didn't think there was a connection between build.com and Fergusons, either, but I checked into it and it turns out that there is a large, British parent company that owns both build.com and Fergusons. However, it's important to know that, whenever I compared prices, they were much better at build.com than at Fergusons (both online and at my local Fergusons). I just checked out the price of a Hansgrohe faucet I'm familiar with and it was $161 at build.com and $201 at Fergusons. Occasionally Amazon will be close to or about the same as build.com in pricing, but I have to pay sales tax most of the time at Amazon, and don't at build.com, which saves me nearly 10% on my orders. I also like build.com because they carry other products besides plumbing fixtures, like lighting, cabinet hardware, fans/vents, tankless water heaters, vanities, mirrors, etc.

UPDATE UGH!!! I am so frustrated! (See more photos below.) First of all, it has been over a week since I placed swatch orders from FashionsFabricClub and Fabric.com and I have not received anything. Very disappointed! So I was getting antsy to find something before the upholsterers come back for the sofa. DH and I drove up to take a look at a new fabric store in the next town. We found what we thought was the perfect green and purchased 12 yards. No returns! Got it home and I realized that not only is it the wrong hue of green to go with my bluish green dining room walls (store lighting can play tricks and it is showing more yellow green at home), but while the fabric has a texture, it's really not large enough to see when far away. So the fabric just looks like a yellow green slab. Boo! I thought about painting the dining rooms walls the same as the rest of the open area - BM Decatur Buff, and then I wouldn't have to worry about matching the blueish green DR walls. And I could have some dimensional things done to the sofa during the reupholstering like a few buttons, double stitched seems, or nailhead trim. These of course would make the sofa look less formal which I am perfectly fine with. However...I then realized that the fabric also looks bad with my Decatur Buff gold/tans walls! And to further realize what a bad choice I made, when leaving the LR and entering the Master, I noticed that my bedroom also has a green theme going on. Green and gold comforter, and a greenish gold bench at the bottom of the bed. I'm an idiot! Now I am seriously thinking of either leaving the sofa the way it is (old and faded salmon), or covering the sofa with the white/cream. Maybe it will not look as bad as I think. The yellow hue does not show up as intense in the below photos. It could be my lighting making the yellow tones, but I need lights! In fact, the color looks more like the mock-up that I used in my first post. Why didn't I notice how yellow that looked against the DR walls! :( Green fabric on sofa looking back toward DR (It's not as close in color as it looks.) Looking towards wingchairs (Looks good with wingchairs.) Against the gold/tan walls (this is the best representation of fabric color, yet when I look at the fabric against the wall, it looks worse.) What's going in the dining room?: Fabric for Host/Hostess Chairs - (Welting to be done in side chair fabric.) Fabric for Side Chairs - (Bad photo, but it's a raw silk look.) Adding the white/cream sofa fabric again to see how it looks with the H/H and dining side chairs. Voting appreciated...Thanks for looking!