Personally I'd rather buy one from IKEA and use the change left over from $12k to buy.. a used truck to drive the sofa home in.. but apparently there's a market.
You can certainly go much higher for smaller companies producing actual custom stuff, using exotic materials, for a giant sectional instead of a single sofa, etc.
I think a Stickley dining set or side hutch is probably ~$12k not on sale, and a sofa could probably go anywhere from $6k to $20k, but YMMV. (I don't personally own anything like that.)
But even brands like Herman Miller or Ekornes can really add up. (And I don't think of them as being the highest-end of things. Even hiring a quality woodworker to make something for you can end up similarly priced depending on detailing, finish, wood species, etc.)
Just “made as if it’s not supposed to be replaced every five years” can bump the price of a sofa way higher than $500.
Doesn’t need to be $14k, but probably $4k bare minimum, without paying a premium for a brand name or anything like that, nor going with leather.
The cheaper ones almost always use low-density foam that compresses badly with use in a couple years (IKEA is a big exception here! But also most of their sofas are more than $500…), frames that start to get iffy in a few years, and upholstery that looks ratty after a similar amount of time.
Furniture is on my list of things where there used to be a range of "solid, and you can make some choices" that was accessible to a lot of people, that has turned into "you can get whatever you want as long as it's made of particle board and laminate and will have a very finite lifetime." Because the old "solid and you can make some choices" zone is mostly upper middle class plus now. (Naming of that site aside.)
