Not yet is not never

A furniture seller in Dubai explains why his sofas will never sell well online.

People want to sit on them before they pay. They cannot judge the colour of the fabric from a screen. They worry the size will be wrong for the room. They want to talk to someone who knows. They do not trust a large purchase that arrives in a van from somewhere they have never seen.

Every point is accurate. Each of them also deserves two words added to the end: so far.

None of these is a law of nature. They are descriptions of how online furniture has mostly been done until now. And the proof that they can be solved is already in his customers' homes. The same people who will not buy a sofa from a screen spend hours each week choosing clothes, groceries and gifts on their phones, without a second thought about touch or trust. Somebody made those experiences good enough that the objections dissolved.

So the question is not whether a sofa can be sold online. It is whether anyone is willing to do the work. Fabric swatches sent free in an envelope. A measuring guide that asks about the doorway, not just the room. A short video of a real person sitting down and getting back up. A named person on the phone who has sat on every model. A return that costs the buyer nothing but a morning.

What does not work is the lazy version: a showroom photographed, uploaded, and left to sell itself. That copies the shop without any of what made the shop persuasive, and then blames the medium when it fails.

If one buyer has ever ordered a sofa online and loved it, the thing is possible. The rest is effort.