Somewhat related, I read the book "Factory Man" [1] probably five years ago now. It's a story of a guy who came from a big furniture producing family that had several factory towns in Virginia I believe.
Anyway, talks about how they got started out in the late 1800s and how starting in the 1980s things started getting cheaper and cheaper and then started getting moved to China for manufacture.
Then it gets into how this guy worked to actually keep the company he inherited up and running in the US.
Was pre-2016, but the book definitely had undertones of all the big "culture" stories that went around that election.
The low end market keeps growing because it's all people can afford. Because salaries are not keeping up with productivity, and outside of white collar jobs, are struggling to keep up with inflation.
They assume it's high end because, to them, it is.
You can’t get people to spend enough on furniture that’ll last a century if they know it’ll be replaced once it’s out of fashion. People generally don’t keep a couch forever, even if it isn’t broken.
