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Sop For Sofa Sellers

July 2, 2009


In June Congress passed the "Cash for Clunkers" law. The GM site states in part

Recently, an important new law was passed to provide U.S. Government vouchers valued from $3,500 to $4,500 when you trade-in a vehicle and purchase a new one that meets or exceeds higher MPG standards. The Car Allowance Rebate System (or CARS -- commonly referred to as Cash for Clunkers or Customer Assistance to Recycle and Save) will be available to new car shoppers at registered, participating dealers later this summer.

I think it's a novel idea to stimulate car sales.

I want to suggest a similar idea for our industry.  I call it "Sop For Sofa Sellers", SARS for short, the Sofa Allowance Rebate System.  Now I know why we say "sofa" niot "couch".  We can't use the word Couch or Couch Allowance Rebate System, because that would be CARS and we'd be back where we started.

Sop is a good word.  I had to look it up to get the exact meaning.

sop

Noun

1. a small bribe or concession given or made to someone to keep them from causing trouble: a sop to her conscience

I'm not against a small bribe to get people to buy our sofas even if I'm bribing them with your money.  I figure that if I sell more sofas, I will hire more people and pay more taxes.  Of course don't forget, I might have one of those $4,500 vouchers you gave me when I traded up, to apply toward all those taxes I owe.

There could be other programs that would help our industry: Rebate for rugs (RARS); Fringe Benefit for Fabrics (FARS); Allurement for Accent Products (AARP) .  Sorry, that has been used.  We could even have PFFF.  It stands for Putting On The Feedbag for Furniture.  It souds like Pooof.  That's the sound a balloon makes when you let it go.  That's what happens to all the tax dollars we send to Washington.  That's what happened to our domestic furniture industry.

PFFF!

Thoughts?  You can comment directly, email me at landfair3554@comcast.net or follow me @landfairfurnitu. 

Posted by Mike Landfair on July 2, 2009 | Comments (2)