Leather suites - buy in France or the UK??

[LindaP]

Hi, I am thinking of buying a two and three seater leather suite. In the UK they are very cheap to come by, Argos, etc etc, I just wondered if it was worth buying it here and taking over or if any of you out there know anywhere in France to buy similar furniture. I am near Confolens in between Poitiers and Limoges.  Many thanks

[hastobe]

Have a look at the websites of But (http://www.but.fr/), Fly (http://www.fly.fr/) and Conforama (http://www.conforama.fr/) - which are the three major department stores in France.  You will also need to consider how much it is costing you to transport the stuff to France - which, even with your own van, may not be cheap (taking into account fuel / ferry costs etc).  We decided it was just easier to buy in France - which also means it is more straightforward if there's a problem and you need to return any items.

Kathie

[LindaP]

Many thanks for that info, I will take a look.

 

 

[Beryl]

I think the price of leather settees are dearer in France (even when they are in the sale) if the leaflets we receieve are anything to go by.

IKEA do some leather suites and in the UK they are quite reasonable priced , I don't know how the prices in Ikea.fr compare though.

[Gastines]

Try Land of Leather. They have stores near Poole & Portsmouth for easy collection and are bubble wrapped if you ask. They do many styles/colours/prices.

Regards.

[Teamedup]

I actually think settees in France are of poor quality. We have bought several since we have been here including good makes.

We bought our first from the french version of Land of Leather and it was expensive and that was the first time I needed to see one of the consumer associations, which we had to join to get the problems sorted out. The sorting out was of a temporary nature as once the problem was fixed in one bit, it would start somewhere else.

The second was a cloth one, and my MIL bought one in the Uk at exactly the same time. She got a three seater, and two armchairs one that became a 'relax' chair. She didn't even pay much for it. I bought a Jacque Lelieu. Hers was still going strong when she passed away quite a number of years later and her husband still has it and it is fine. We got a two seater and an arm chair, for several hundred pounds more,  ours had had to be recovered after the first year and we were told that they wouldn't do it again as we were using it too much. And it is true, they call excessive use something like sitting on a settee 4/5 hours a day. Now me, I thought that was normal.

The last one we bought hasn't been too bad, another leather one. It was far more expensive than I could have bought it for in the UK, I am sure that I have seen the same model over there, it looked the same at least.

[Gastines]

Teamedup. I am sure that Land of Leather do NOT have any branches in France. There are obviously plenty of leather suite suppliers who use like names buy NOT L.oL.

Regards.

[Teamedup]

I said 'the french version' of Land of Leather, it was called  'L'univers du cuir' and their shops did look remarkably like the ones in the UK.

[Dick Smith]

We bought a very nice black hide sofa from But for about (I think) €400!

Very modern, plain, not at all French. Apparently the company had set out to make modern furniture and soon went bust...

[hastobe]

I don't think there is such a thing as a reasonably priced English leather sofa - as far as I know they are all made in China....well Land of Leather's are anyway - and I'm pretty sure the same goes for Argos too

Kathie

[Will]

Our (mostly) leather sofa was made by Tetrad, definitely made in England (at the company's factory in Preston). They have stockists all over France (see the company's web site), probably more expensive to buy than in Britain but no transport hassles. It is enormous, even though it splits in two halves it was a squeeze getting it into our Transit. It wasn't that expensive, I can't remember what we paid for it in a sale at a local retailer in UK, but it was about on a par with the equivalent from somebody like M&S, less than those we looked at in Laura Ashley (though we have other sofas and chairs from there, including a 3-seater cloth one that we got on impulse at a very big discount and brought to France in a Peugeot 306 estate car - with the doors closed - that really was a squeeze). Tetrad was certainly dearer than DFS or those Welsh mail order places that advertise in the magazines, but much better made.

Edit - I re-read the orginal post and went back to the Tertrad site, there is a stockist in Limoges. Trouble is, that's Roche-Bobois, so you can probably forget the 'reasonably priced' tag, though other stockists might be more reasonable.

[cooperlola]

There is a lot of nice (looking) good value leather stuff in "Michigan" here - do you have one close by?

[P]

Linda, we were keen to buy settees in France and looked around a number of stores, including some of those mentioned above. We concluded that non were to our taste so we ended up buying in the UK (Furniture Village). When they were delivered to our UK address, it was clear from the packaging that they hd originally been transported on end. We therefore loaded the LWB Luton that we took to France with them on end and they did not take up that much space. In adition, I think they would have been cheaper in the UK compared with what we had seen in France - in addition, the OH wanted electric recliners [Www]