Why no sofa should cost $20

At a typical furniture store, a sofa might cost $2,000. If you browse on Temu, the giant online marketplace that ships products directly from Chinese factories, you can find a sofa for $23. And if Amazon launches its own new discount marketplace, it reportedly plans to limit the price for sofas to $20.

That has obvious sustainability implications. “A $20 couch is already destined for the landfill,” says Pete Oyler, an associate professor at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). “We’ve lost our sense of value so much if that might be perceived as a good value.” As a consumer, you’ll soon need to spend more to replace it—and the external costs on society, both for the environment and the workers in the supply chain, are higher.

It’s the extreme version of fast furniture: It was already possible to buy a $150 or $250 loveseat at Target or Wayfair. Consumers have already become more likely to think of at least some of their furniture as disposable. If it’s cheap, it’s tempting to redecorate more often. If a leg breaks, there’s little incentive to fix it if you can easily replace the whole thing. Low prices and poor quality don’t just generate more waste, but churn through more resources, from trees to shipping fuel. Your grandparents might have had the same couch for decades; you’ll likely have to repeatedly replace yours. (Even pricier furniture now might not last more than a decade.)

But if a cheap piece of furniture is bad, an ultracheap one is likely worse. To get such low prices, manufacturers will inevitably cut corners, and potentially break laws.

“When we see a price like [a $20 sofa], it’s a red flag that maybe there’s some part of the supply chain for that product where we need to do further investigation,” says Shawn Bhimani, an assistant professor in supply chain and information management at Northeastern University. “Is it the material that is basically rock-bottom price and is that potentially because it’s coming from a place where that material can’t be sold anywhere else because of the risk of forced labor?”

Right now, Bhimani says, most Chinese cotton comes from a region where Uyghur people are forced to work. It’s illegal to import into the U.S., but some companies try to find ways around that. “What we track is how some of that material that ends up in products like sofas might be going through these back channels or other ways of reaching the supply chain that it makes it harder to trace,” he explains. (Traceability is becoming easier, he says, and he and his colleagues have developed an open-source tool to help.) Amazon wouldn’t confirm whether it’s planning this type of storefront, but says all of its vendors must meet its supply chain standards.

If customs laws or tariffs change, it’s possible that Amazon might decide not to move forward with the rumored store. Temu has used a loophole when selling in the U.S.—under the “de minimus” trade provision, shipments that are worth less than $800 don’t have to pay tariffs. A small package that goes directly from a Chinese factory to a consumer also isn’t likely to be inspected at a port. As customs officials have ramped up inspections for bigger shipments in recent years, Temu and Shein, its Chinese rival, have slipped through. That could change, as Congress is considering two bills that would give more oversight. For now, it’s one of the reasons it’s possible to make such cheap furniture.

Ideally, consumers would reset their expectations of furniture. “Back in the day, we used to save up for large purchases in our home,” says Coco Ree Lemery, a furniture designer and visiting professor at Purdue University. “I think that there’s kind of this idea of immediate gratification now that isn’t in conjunction with quality, right? If you want something to be delivered to you in two days, we can’t expect any reasonable type of quality. The more that we can think about the items that we own having value long-term, the more we can kind of slow down the process of buying—which no capitalist society ever wants to hear—the better off we are. I want to save up and make a purchase that I’m going to cherish.”

Some smaller furniture companies are more focused on sustainability and durability. “There’s a huge range of independent design studios that are working in ways that are more aware of our world and the environment,” says Oyler at RISD. His students, too, now think about sustainability not just in terms of the materials used, but “in rethinking the whole economic framework,” he says.

But some mass retailers are also trying to grapple with finding a balance between sustainability and affordability. Ikea, for example, is trying to make its furniture more durable and to nudge consumers to resell it when they no longer need it. If you’re on a budget, there’s another option: search your local Buy Nothing group or an estate sale for a free or cheap vintage couch, which is likely to last much longer.