For most of their lives, millennials have been living in the fast lane. Billion-dollar businesses catered to their every whim: fast food, fast fashion, and even fast furniture. Everything they wanted they bought online with the flick of a finger.
Life in the fast lane has suddenly screeched to a halt. That’s partly because of the pandemic. Supply-chain snafus have emptied stores and warehouses, frustrating millennials who had gotten used to instant gratification. Also, as landfills swell to bursting, millennials are increasingly worried their feverish buying habits are harming the environment.
The hot new trend among millennials: vintage, and especially vintage furniture.
Weary of the cheap, disposable furniture they’ve been buying for years from Ikea and Wayfair, millennials are discovering the benefits of investing in quality, pre-owned furniture. For one, they’re charmed to discover that vintage furniture typically costs less than new.
Furthermore, vintage furniture is typically made of solid wood and built to last, thus ending the cycle of buying and tossing out furniture every few years. Some 12 million tons of furniture is dumped in landfills every year, according to environmental experts. Millennials are eager to show some love for the planet and the sheer waste of their disposable furniture is beginning to grate.
Vintage is immediately available, ending the increasingly common and intensely frustrating many-month delays to furnish a home. Vintage may even be a healthier option for the home, a major concern for the health-conscious. Fast furniture, typically made from foam, plastic, and particleboard, emits toxic chemicals including formaldehyde for weeks and even months after delivery.
At Furniture Consignment Gallery, we applaud the trend.
“Now that they are buying homes, millennials are looking for unique pieces of furniture that bring character and style to a room,” Diana, my wife, an interior designer and co-owner of FCG, says. “They’ve gotten tired of the cold, severe aesthetic that dominated the market for so many years. Millennials have discovered the warmth and patina of vintage.”
All of us at FCG bid a hearty welcome to millennials. We’ve got a vast inventory of quality pre-owned furniture that you can buy and take home today. Explore our website and discover all the styles we have in our showrooms: farmhouse, modern, traditional, transitional. Tired of particleboard? Check out the beauty of our furniture carved from cherry, mahogany, oak, and pine.
Even better yet, declare a moratorium on shopping online. Leave your cell phone in your car and meander around one or all of our three expertly curated stores in Hanover, Plymouth, and Natick. Touch the soft down pillows. Sprawl out on a leather sectional. Wiggle into an upholstered chair and put your feet up on a matching ottoman. You’ll find out what you’ve been missing all these years.