While you can find people who are willing to pay 10x Ikea for your wares, they're few and far between, and aren't likely to be repeat customers if the products are sturdy enough.
Again, that falls into the "not even wrong" category. First of all, you sell at 20x-50x Ikea, not 10x. People at that end of the market are socially gregarious, wealthy, often into conspicuous consumption... and they always have friends just like them.
You just have to know where to sell it and how to get work commissioned.
You need to understand that volume is not important but demand is.
There's no doubt that cheaper mass produced goods will replace more expensive manually produced ones. But as techies, we often overestimate the speed at which this change actually happens in the world.
I bet there are thousands of people who really value high quality handmade wooden goods. The internet and mobile tech now makes it easier than ever before to find these people. So, there's probably enough money to be made in selling to these people. There'll also be less competition.
If your furniture is not older than 20 years, I doubt that you have manually produced furniture. Ikea was the pioneer and the rest somehow followed.
Probably almost nothing that you own is hand-made.
It really depends on where you live; some places, people buy things that are more expensive but last forever.
Yes, fundamentally for the first one year. Maybe I am the only one who gets weird feelings when furniture starts to degenerate each time it is in use. Ikea is cheap and good looking, at least for a short amount of time.
If you don't like that, you can buy luxury furniture - or buy the high-priced Ikea stuff that somehow has reasonable prices.
I think hand made stuff is in high demand, as long as it is affordable. AFAIK it's not... for me. :)
You're making incredible stuff that will likely last forever, but fundamentally performs the same tasks as something that costs 1/10 as much.
While you can find people who are willing to pay 10x Ikea for your wares, they're few and far between, and aren't likely to be repeat customers if the products are sturdy enough.
I feel for your dad. Unfortunately, skilled artisan labor in the face of mass produced items that work similarly and undercut cost greatly is not the greatest place to be.