Ready-to-assemble furniture (RTA), also known as knock-down furniture (KD), flat pack furniture, or kit furniture, owing to its convenience in packing and less occupancy in small living households. It is a form of furniture that requires customer assembly and comes along with the label "Assembly Required". The separate components are packed for sale in cartons which also contain assembly instructions and hardware, it becomes more popular with consumers who wish to save money by assembling the product themselves. Self-assembly furniture (RTA) is exceedingly simple and easy to set up and also has its advantages and beneficial qualities. This furniture type can be very appealing and stylish with a vast range of designs that are there in the market today. Ready-to-assemble furniture can be found in all kinds of settings including offices, dorm rooms, bedrooms, and even outdoors, it can be purchased for many purposes:
- Living room furniture
- Office furniture
- Bookcases
- Tables/Desks
- Storage cabinets
- Beds
- Kitchen Carts/Utilities
- Wardrobes/closets
- Children furniture
What's the difference between RTA vs. DIY
Do-it-yourself furniture is not similar to Ready-to-assemble furniture.
RTA products are free-standing and pre-packed with every single piece to set up the product. DIY furniture needs consumers' imagination, creativity, and resourcefulness. With this method, users can modify, customize and create products with their innovative ideas and designs.
In other words, RTA is a more specific tenet of DIY. Imagine that RTA refers to a model kit to build a toy plane but DIY can refer to either building that model plane kit or crafting the individual pieces yourself to create your aircraft.
The Pros & Cons to RTA Furniture
Ready-to-assemble furniture is easy for transportation, cost-effective and includes numerous benefits. It is easy to fix together the items by successfully following the instructions and keeping watch on each component as per its design.
Pros
**Affordability **
RTA furniture is manufactured in larger quantities of standardized measurements with advanced machines. This mass-production means it cuts material & labor costs, time, and other resources in a cost-efficient way.
Cost-Efficient
Since RTA furniture come as flat-pack furniture, meaning components are positioned and packed in a flat box with the saving space in mind.
It typically ship broken down into a more compact box. It's smaller and easier to loading into the container for importing, the loading quantity will be much more compared to the fully assembled furniture, it's one way for costing-saving for you.
When you arrange the delivery from you warehouse to customer, the expresses can easily put into the vehicle and bring to customer, thanks to the flat packing. It's dramatically lessens the cost since most shippers consider the weight and dimensions of the item when determining how much to charge for shipment.
If you choose a fully-assembled piece of furniture, be prepared to pay more for the convenience of not having to assemble the furniture and the high price of shipping a larger item. Fully-assembled furniture takes up far more space, typically requiring freight shipping for products as large as a desk. If budget is your top concern, RTA is the way to go.
**Flexibility **
Fully assembled furniture come in a fixed design, and you pretty much get what you see. While RTA furniture offers much more flexibility since manufacturers can producing upon either their own design or customized based on your ideas. And sometimes you can buy the component from market for the different furniture profiles offered can fit available hardware to form different configurations to match your specific needs. These components are typically modular, much like a jigsaw puzzle that can be easily assembled.
Self-Assembly
Generally speaking, RTA furniture are always going to be a less expensive route compared to pre-assembled furniture or hiring a contractor.
The package of RTA furniture always comes with a clear, easy read assembly instruction will all the components needed to set up. It is generally simple to assemble with basic tools such as screwdrivers or allenkey, which are also sometimes included. It usually takes from 5-60minutes to put together for the product, it's depends on what you buy. You may need to simply attach the legs to a table's top, or you may need a little more work and time to build up a desk or storage cabinet.
By assembling the furniture themselves, customers can cut down on expenses as well.
Cons
Durability Concern
RTA furniture produced mainly from medium-density fibreboard (MDF) or particle board, the cost of producing this type of furniture is cheaper than using solid wood. It can be coated with a polymer laminate to replicate various types of wood, allowing a high quality looking finished product, but it's less durable than custom-made of solidwood furnitures.
Time Commitment
Since it packed every single piece in positioned, so it needs you to set it up by yourself.
You'll first need to invest some time in reading the instructions and watching videos. If a product comes with more than 10pieces, you may need more time sometimes maybe houres for everything goes perfectly.
Parts Injury
Like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, RTA furniture are generally easy to assemble, but the risk of damaging the product or something can go wrong during the assembly. Any item which is not assembled accurately can damage the product. This can even break or make the furniture loosened.
Limited Design selections
Custom-made furniture is called that for a reason. It can be crafted to the specific requirements of the client, be it because they want a piece that is one of a kind or so it fits in a room of an irregular shape.
Since RTA furniture are manufactured to be easier to assemble and transport, the designs request as less as profiles. Complex configurations may not be possible to find.
Top 10 key players of RTA furniture in the market
- IKEA
- Steinhoff
- Sauder
- Dorel
- La-Z-Boy
- Bush Industries
- Whalen Furniture
- Steinhoff Holdings
- Tvilum A/S
- Ashley Home Stores
Those key players work with their partner all over the world with different types of RTA furniture, much of the actual manufacturing takes place in China,vietnam and europe.
Choose Hometios to boost your RTA furniture business
Hometios furniture is a manufacturing and trading combo also loacted in China, with more than 10+rich experience in this industy, we are able to provide a wide range of indoor furniture with choice of painted/melamine lamination/paper foil in combination with various kind of MDF/PB/Solidwood/Bamboo, to meet various needs from different markets to help customers to expand their product line.
We provide a complete offering of services to our customers - tailored to meet the needs of each project to ensure success. Contact us for more details now!