People still reupholster old furniture. I think the real problem is that many goods these days are either so cheap it's cheaper to replacement them entirely, or not built to last, so they never get to a rebuild stage.
Indeed, and all the local (and unfortunately global incentives, like GDP) are aligned for production, not wealth preservation and quality of life. The reupholster option is the most efficient wealth preservation option and saves production capacity for making new furniture for other people.
Since birth rate is below reproduction in most of the world, and population declines (slowly or faster) basically everywhere in the "developed world", even including China, there will be fewer and fewer "other people".
We'll have to produce less and less if we do not keep replacing existing stuff with new (hopefully superior) stuff.
And this is a big deal, too. We've made huge strides in cars and appliances. Outside of specialty needs furniture and carpentry hasn't changed much over the years.
> there will be fewer and fewer "other people".
This is going to take a long time (when measured over the typical human lifespan), and won't be very noticeable outside of child-oriented institutions. Major changes in industries and other events that prompt large numbers of people to move will still be more noticeable.
The transition of Japan from a fast growing "tiger" to a society with few children, older people dominating, and contracting industry occurred very much within my lifetime, and I'm not an old person yet.
The bespoke stuff is expensive, since there's literally only 1 customer. Think mega yachts.
The 'almost everybody can afford this' is because it's sold to everybody, and thus economies of scale _allows_ it to be affordable.
The old 'middle ground', to me, is a pre-industrial idea that locally sourced craftsman and materials can be used to serve just the local region. It no longer exists because it _can_ no longer exist (except as a sort of cottage industry, or artisanal industry which is hugely inefficient and thus barely anyone buys such things).
In furniture, for example, the old middle ground (20th century) was hundreds of factories, churning out regional furniture that was shipped to cities that had multiple showrooms with reputations based on their curation. This wasn't as expensive as bespoke furniture, but much more than Ikea, or ChinaDirect.
In the US North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, all had furniture industries. I don't know if that was better, but it was definitely different, much more diverse, less affordable, but higher quality. Clothes worked pretty similarly.
Within a brief time, the company employed 32 people and manufactured tables, chairs, and a bedroom set. The solid-oak bedroom set sold for nine dollars and included a bed, dresser, and washstand.
In 1886 the average daily wage for a laborer was about $1.47 ( https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015059385339&vi... ). So that bedroom set would be a week's wage. That's a really good price, even today. And it was solid oak (harder to come by these days given the decline in old growth forests).
The thing about clothes is they were made to last because of the high price of labor for their making. Once automation really took off following WW2 they became a lot cheaper, and so were treated cheaper. And also weren't repaired nearly as often.
The problem is, there is "almost everybody can afford this", and there is "completely bespoke". We have eliminated the middle ground.