Premium Sofas Give Away Leather Care Products in Return for Website Feedback

Leading leather furniture website, www.premiumsofas.co.uk, is offering website visitors a free leather care product worth £9.99 when they complete a simple survey online.

Visitors to the leather furniture website, http://www.premiumsofas.co.uk, can receive a free leather care product if they complete an online survey about the site.

After completing just four simple questions about how easy they find the website to use, what extra information would be useful, their buying intentions and what stage of the decision making process they are at, visitors can then choose from a selection of top quality leather care products as a free gift.

The gifts available include a leather rejuvenator, which conditions and feeds any leather furniture, or a specialist leather cleaner which helps bring leather back to life. Both products are worth £9.99 each and the chosen gift will be sent completely free of charge to any website visitors completing the online survey – absolutely no purchase is necessary and all personal details will be protected under the Premium Sofas privacy policy.

Commenting on the launch of the survey, Sam Neumann, Owner of Premium Sofas said that: “we’ve had many happy customers buying leather furniture from us through our website for several years now, but we wanted to try and find out more about how easy people find our website to use, to ensure we provide all the information customers need. It’s all part of our continuing commitment to not only providing the best quality leather furniture at great prices, but also the best possible web browsing experience.”

Premium Sofas is one of the UK’s leading online retailers of high quality, discounted leather furniture. Visitors can choose from a great range of furniture in a wide variety of styles and designs, in a choice of sizes including 2 seater sofas, 3 seater sofas, sofabeds, armchairs, corner sofas and footstools. Furniture is available in all the popular leather colours of brown, black and cream.

Visitors can order their chosen leather sofa securely online, and most sofas, settees and suites are held in stock for fast delivery. All leather sofas include a full 12 month guarantee and have been enjoyed by numerous satisfied customers.

The Premium Sofas showroom is located in the Rossendale valley in Lancashire, and the company is part of Neumann Leathers, which has been trading since 1897. Premium Sofas is a Member of The Association of Master Upholsterers and can be contacted free on 0800 977 6340, or by visiting http://www.premiumsofas.co.uk.

The Training Behind Sofa Manufacturing

The Association of Master Upholsterers and Soft Furnishers (AMUSF) was founded in 1947 to protect the interests of upholsterers, small furniture makers, and soft furnishers. Today the Association runs training courses at Approved Training Centres around the country.

Part of the Furniture, Furnishings & Interiors industry, which comprises around 12,000 UK workplaces and employs around 147,000 people, The Association is also backed by Proskills, the Sector Skills Council for the Process & Manufacturing sector. This means the work of its members and any training it conducts should meet the highest possible standards.

So what are the benefits of all this AMUSF training to leather sofa buyers?

• You can be sure industry standards are at the heart of any AMUSF training.
• Your sofa will be the work of professionally accredited craftsmen and women.
• Working with Proskills, the Association is committed to maintaining its rigorous training standards.
• The AMUSF also has a Consumer Code of Practice outlining what consumers have a right to expect of members.

How to Choose the Right Leather Sofa

The following advice and interior design tips can be offered to anyone thinking about buying a new sofa:

• Light coloured walls can be contrasted with bolder furniture colours to make an individual statement.
• Vibrant colours on walls can overpower furniture and make a room feel smaller. It is definitely better to use lighter tones if you don’t want your furniture to be ignored.
• Use paint charts or magazines for inspiration. These are useful when you want a colour scheme for the whole room, not just the walls. Correctly used, they will help you choose “a harmonious group of colours” which suit “your furniture and other room accessories.”
• The materials you choose make a statement. Plush velvets and chenilles add luxury, while cottons and other natural fibres provide the utilitarian and functional feel. 
• Cushions scattered on your leather sofa are an easy way to introduce another colour to your room. Patterned cushions are popular and can brighten up a room.
• Brown or lighter colour leather sofas will suit most rooms, while black leather tends to fit with ultra modern, minimalist interiors.
• Two 2-seater leather sofas may suit a smaller room better than one 3-seater and an armchair, and offer more flexibility.
• Sofas can often look bigger in your home than in the showroom so measure your living space carefully.

Caring for Your Leather Sofa

Leather will last a lifetime if treated with respect and properly cared for.

For minor spills it is enough to use a cloth dampened sparingly with washing up liquid. For tougher stains you may need a dedicated cleaner. This may also contain a leather feeder which should be used occasionally to retain the fat liqour and give some protection to the surface.

Leather absorbs dyes in different ways causing slight variations in shade from skin to skin. This contributes to the rich effects noticeable on the more expensive 'aniline' leathers. 'Aniline' is a type of dye and is generally used to describe the greater proportion of dye used on higher grade leathers to allow the natural grain to appear without showing too many defects. Lower grade leathers need more pigment (paint) to cover obvious defects.

How Leather Sofas are Made

Leather is produced by the tanning and finishing of hides and skins which are a by-product of mainly domestic animals. Due to the large panels necessary for the production of leather upholstery, it is cow hide that is preferred in the vast majority of cases.

Every hide has its own unique signature and if examined carefully will show its own history from its grazing habits to the climate in which it was raised. It is these so-called defects that give leather its character.

Hides are selected and finished by leather experts. Each is hand picked from English and European stock, considered the best in the world. Wooden sofa frames are usually of solid Birch, Beech or Ash hardwood, and seats are either steel sprung or layered with high tension webbing.

Why is Leather Furniture so Popular?

Leather sofas have remained in fashion for centuries, from traditional classic sofas to newer contemporary leather sofa designs. The popularity of leather sofas can be attributed to a number of factors:

Leather mellows gracefully with age and regular use, being enhanced by the natural oils from your hands.
Leather is far easier to clean than most fabrics and with a little care will last for many years.

Leather is constantly adjusting to its environment, so it will not become hot and sticky in the summer, nor cold in the winter. Leather will breathe and ventilate, allowing it to adapt to its environment.

Brown or lighter coloured sofas in particular suit the design style of most rooms, whilst a wide range of both modern and traditional leather sofas are available to suit any design scheme.

Tackling the Problem of Toxic Sofas

In 2009 leather sofas hit the news after consumers complained about burns and other skin complaints, which they claimed were caused by leather sofas purchased from a number of UK furniture retailers.

Following an investigation by the BBC Watchdog consumer affairs programme, in April 2010 a judge at the High Court ordered several High Street retailers to pay out up to £20m in compensation to customers who received chemical burns from their leather sofas.

According to clinical tests the health damage was caused by the chemical dimethylfumarate (DMF), a biocide used to prevent moulds that may deteriorate leather furniture or during storage or transport in a humid climate. Biocidal products containing DMF are not legally available in the EC for the treatment of products against moulds, and so no leather sofa manufactured in the EU contains DMF.

However, DMF has been present in products imported into the EU from other countries such as China. In these cases, DMF was usually contained in small pouches fixed inside the leather furniture. When it evaporated, DMF penetrated through clothing onto consumers’ skin where it caused painful skin conditions and in some cases respiratory troubles.

The EU now requires member states to ensure that products containing DMF are not placed or made available on the market.