Seeing Is Believing

If you were to do a Google search with the terms “teak furniture” or “outdoor teak furniture“, you would probably find yourself inundated with a slew of companies claiming to sell the best Grade A teak wood furniture on the market.

Now, some of these companies may actually sell very nice furniture. Unfortunately though, many do not and those are the ones you want to avoid.

Here are two critical things to check:

1) Does the company have a showroom or warehouse where you can actually drive your car up and see the furniture first-hand?

Teak furniture is an expensive investment, and if you are in a position to spend the money on it you want to be sure you are getting what you are paying for. If a company does not have any place for you to look at the furniture (and I mean really look at it) then there is a good chance they are afraid to expose its poor quality.

High-end teak furniture should be nearly uniform in color, and free of knots. The wood should have an extremely smooth finish, and the joints should all fit tightly and be free of any kinds of wood fillers. Furthermore, teak furniture that is sold as “new” should not already have a coat of oil or paint on it – a lot of times this is an attempt by the manufacturer to hind imperfections in the construction and quality of the furniture.

So before placing an order online, check to see if there is any place for you to view the furniture before buying. Even if you live far away and can’t make it to the showroom, at least you know that the furniture is displayed in front of customers and the owners are proud to show it…this can lead to a comfortable purchase.

2) Similar to number one, don’t buy from any store that doesn’t actually inventory the product. Many of these online teak furniture stores are merely that – websites created by people that are acting as a broker and selling product from another manufacturer. These types of online businesses are run by people with limited to zero experience in the furniture industry – many of them may not have ever assembled a single piece of teak furniture in their lives. They are merely brokering it out to customers via the internet and trying to act as if they have a relationship with the manufacturer (which many times they do not other than they get them to drop-ship orders).

To be safe, email the teak furniture companies that you find online and ask them if they have an inventory of product stored somewhere. If a company has estimated delivery times of greater than 5 to 7 business days, chances are they do not have any teak furniture on-hand.

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