American Made vs Imports
Pool table world loves Asia. I really don’t have the exact figures but my educated guess would be that between 50% - 70% of all tables sold in the United States are made abroad. When you take tables that retail for $2500 or less, that figure probably jumps to 90%. And almost all of those are from Asia.
All wood is expensive. In the U.S., domestic hardwoods are very expensive. Here’s a list of the most popular domestic hardwood in ascending order of cost. Poplar, Oak, Maple, Cherry and Black Walnut. I’m not giving you the cost in dollars because there are a lot of variables but I will say that Black Walnut is always about 3-4 times the cost of Oak and believe me, they don’t give Oak away either. But we are lucky in one respect. We are never going to run out of wood, especially Oak. The rest of the world? Not so lucky.
The worldwide woodworking /furniture industry has an unabated and ravenous appetite for wood. That’s why they move around decimating one poor country's wood inventory after another. In the Philippines, 80% of its rain forests wood are gone. The Philippine government finally put a stop to this but as we all know, way too late. As far as the wood industry goes, they just went on to other countries in Southeast Asia. And some of that wood goes into making pool tables for your home.
For a long time, the tables made in Asia were a joke. The wood wasn’t properly dried, the finish virtually bubbled off and it took hours longer to assemble a table because half the time was spent re-engineering it. Today, they have most of those problems worked out, but they still have problems. I have a friend who works for a pool table retailer who imports tables. He told me they’ve gotten better but they still have a lot of problems matching stains and he gave me this example. If they had a scratch in one rail and needed to be replaced, they couldn’t do it because the stain of the replacement rail wouldn’t match the rest of the rails. He went as far as to say that even when they replaced the entire six rails, many times they didn’t match the rest of the table. He also mentioned that they have a big problem with solid wood legs splitting because the wood wasn’t sufficiently dried.
If you want to buy a table on line you’ll have lots of choices of whom to buy them from, but primarily, you’ll be buying tables made from one source, and that’s Asia. I encourage you to go to some of these websites. Their front page features American flags, usually a giant building that you’ll assume is their manufacturing plant (it isn’t, it’s their warehouse) and they always talk about good ole American or Old World craftsmanship. They even have great sounding American or English names for their lines of tables, such as: Thurston Howell III Pool Tables. And nowhere on their websites do they tell you where the tables are made. The blogs are full of their own customers telling horror stories of how they’ve been ripped off and yet they still sell tables.
If you're interested in spending money on a beautiful, well built piece of furniture, I'd strongly suggest Olhausen and A.E.Schmidt. Both manufacturer tables using domestic hardwoods, and enjoy well earned reputations in our industry. And, unlike many others, are made in America.
For those of you who are a bit more price conscious, if you use the metric of “best value” (price + features+ benefits) not only do I feel I make the best tables in the world, I can actually defend it.
However, if you’re looking for a distinctive piece of furniture and have some money to spend, you simply can’t do any better than A.E.Schmidt or Olhausen.
All wood is expensive. In the U.S., domestic hardwoods are very expensive. Here’s a list of the most popular domestic hardwood in ascending order of cost. Poplar, Oak, Maple, Cherry and Black Walnut. I’m not giving you the cost in dollars because there are a lot of variables but I will say that Black Walnut is always about 3-4 times the cost of Oak and believe me, they don’t give Oak away either. But we are lucky in one respect. We are never going to run out of wood, especially Oak. The rest of the world? Not so lucky.
The worldwide woodworking /furniture industry has an unabated and ravenous appetite for wood. That’s why they move around decimating one poor country's wood inventory after another. In the Philippines, 80% of its rain forests wood are gone. The Philippine government finally put a stop to this but as we all know, way too late. As far as the wood industry goes, they just went on to other countries in Southeast Asia. And some of that wood goes into making pool tables for your home.
For a long time, the tables made in Asia were a joke. The wood wasn’t properly dried, the finish virtually bubbled off and it took hours longer to assemble a table because half the time was spent re-engineering it. Today, they have most of those problems worked out, but they still have problems. I have a friend who works for a pool table retailer who imports tables. He told me they’ve gotten better but they still have a lot of problems matching stains and he gave me this example. If they had a scratch in one rail and needed to be replaced, they couldn’t do it because the stain of the replacement rail wouldn’t match the rest of the rails. He went as far as to say that even when they replaced the entire six rails, many times they didn’t match the rest of the table. He also mentioned that they have a big problem with solid wood legs splitting because the wood wasn’t sufficiently dried.
If you want to buy a table on line you’ll have lots of choices of whom to buy them from, but primarily, you’ll be buying tables made from one source, and that’s Asia. I encourage you to go to some of these websites. Their front page features American flags, usually a giant building that you’ll assume is their manufacturing plant (it isn’t, it’s their warehouse) and they always talk about good ole American or Old World craftsmanship. They even have great sounding American or English names for their lines of tables, such as: Thurston Howell III Pool Tables. And nowhere on their websites do they tell you where the tables are made. The blogs are full of their own customers telling horror stories of how they’ve been ripped off and yet they still sell tables.
If you're interested in spending money on a beautiful, well built piece of furniture, I'd strongly suggest Olhausen and A.E.Schmidt. Both manufacturer tables using domestic hardwoods, and enjoy well earned reputations in our industry. And, unlike many others, are made in America.
For those of you who are a bit more price conscious, if you use the metric of “best value” (price + features+ benefits) not only do I feel I make the best tables in the world, I can actually defend it.
However, if you’re looking for a distinctive piece of furniture and have some money to spend, you simply can’t do any better than A.E.Schmidt or Olhausen.