Four top U.S. furniture brands—Medley Home, Avocado, Maiden Home, and Egg Collective—prioritize American manufacturing, sustainability, and quality over outsourcing.
For decades, affluent countries have outsourced to countries with cheaper labor and manufacturing costs. Outsourcing is so pervasive that it can be difficult to discern if a product is truly produced in the US—especially when slick marketing half-truths are commonly affixed to items, such as “Designed in the US.”
The design industry is plagued by this problem: tagging a product “designed in” rather than “made in” (meaning manufactured), leading to consumer confusion. As consumers increase their interest in navigating the complex furniture manufacturing industry, certain companies are opting for transparency.
Outsourcing manufacturing poses two problems: ethicality and quality. Consumers question worker conditions regarding pay and treatment as well as the quality of materials and product assembly. Today, companies must also consider the impending US tariffs once the 90-day pause comes to a close. The risk of an increased material cost for importing wool, latex, and wood from other countries will result in either the creation of “in-house” material sourcing or higher-priced products.
A certain pride is found globally in marketing home-based manufacturing. “Home is where the heart is” reaches new heights with American-based companies committed to producing at home. By purchasing a loveseat, ottoman, or mattress made in the US from one of these brands, consumers avoid the convoluted questions the outsourcing market brings.
Medley Home: Returning to the “Before Mass Production” Era
Medley Home produces its furniture entirely in the USA, with factories in North Carolina, California, and Pennsylvania. Medley Home seeks to return to a time before mass production and overseas shipping but with modern updates such as plant-based latex and super-soft wool for their sofas, mattresses, and pillows.
They make each piece to order, guaranteeing quality craftsmanship and limiting the carbon footprint of their products by avoiding a surplus of unsold furniture. Since the furniture does not travel far (particularly for intra-United States shipping), less energy and pollution are unnecessarily expended and released into the environment.
Medley Home derives all materials from environmentally conscious sources, such as sustainable textile mills and ethically managed forests. They work towards making furniture for the long-term: well-crafted furniture that defies the ecologically irresponsible carousel of fast consumption. Instead of making furniture that lasts a few years and then slowly decays in a landfill, Medley Home designs durable and dependable pieces meant to remain in homes for generations.
The design of Medley Home’s furniture reflects their concern for durability: stylistically, the pieces, such as their sofas, are conventional and sensible. They are designing the future with longevity in mind—purposively long-lasting, ecologically conscious furniture that is no-nonsense, placing comfort and sustainability over cheaper production costs.
Avocado Mattresses: Transforming Quality Material
Avocado Mattresses, one of the most commercially successful and well-known design brands on this list (likely due, at least in part, to the unforgettable name, invoking an organic-green image), is an organic-certified design company that produces everything for the bedroom: Mattresses, pillows, bedding, nightstands, among other bedroom essentials.
The brand designs its pieces in Hoboken, New Jersey, and manufactures them in its single factory in Los Angeles, California. Avocado is concerned almost exclusively with two things: comfort and sustainability.
Through using distinctive manufacturing processes such as Talalay latex for its namesake mattresses—a more breathable and less dense form of latex (when compared to conventional Dunlop latex)—the brand ensures reliable comfort across its products.
In terms of sustainability, all items in Avocado’s catalog are produced using domestic and imported organic materials, boasting many environmentally conscious certifications, such as GOTS Global Organic Textile Standard) and GOLS (Global Organic Latex Standard), which are both endorsed by the USDA’s organic program.
As a furniture brand, their radical transparency on the origins of their materials is conspicuous and refreshing. The company prominently derives wool from sheep in the Himachal Pradesh region of northern India and extracts latex from rubber trees in Kochi, India. Once the materials arrive in the company’s dedicated factory in Los Angeles, the Avocado team transforms them into ready-to-use organic latex, cotton, and wool.
Maiden Home: Tastefully Functional with Exotic Materials
Like the other brands, Maiden Home proudly manufactures its furniture entirely in the US. Designed in New York and produced primarily in North Carolina, Maiden Home’s focus is on quality and comfort. From a design perspective, Maiden Home is comparatively one of the most dynamic brands on this list.
Their pieces utilize exotic materials, from Italian Bouclé to Shearling and Nubuck Leather, to construct their comprehensive design catalog of dressers, ottomans, counters, coffee tables, sofas, and more. Maiden Home’s designs fit neatly into the contemporary landscape of American furniture: modern and tastefully functional.
Every piece is made to order, offering subtle differences between each item that customers receive. These variations lend each piece a defining uniqueness with slight differences in fabric texture or color to more bold deviations like minor size variants. Before being shipped out, all Maiden Home’s pieces are subject to a thorough inspection, guaranteeing item quality and a healthy degree of uniformity.
Egg Collective: Artistically Oriented, Highbrow Furniture
Egg Collective is a woman-owned furniture design firm based in New York with a Brooklyn woodshop. Out of all the American-designed and manufactured furniture companies on this list, Egg Collective is by far the most artistically oriented, creating highbrow furniture for households (with a tad more disposable income) who meticulously cultivate their living space.
Their elegant showroom in Brooklyn, New York, features a gallery exhibiting pieces that straddle the division between art and design (much like their furniture), such as the sculptural work of their last exhibition, Unearthed by Steven Haulenbeek, and outright visual artwork, like photography by artist-photographer Tealia Ellis Ritter.
Typically comprised of minimal and hyper-modern pieces, Egg Collective’s collections defy simple American utilitarianism. Despite the departure from mass-production expectations, their pieces manage to avoid the fate of sacrificing comfort or aesthetics in the name of avant-garde radicality.
With muted colors and subtle, unexpected designs, Egg Collective offers an inventive application of American furniture design.
