A woman from Houston, Texas, who went shopping for a certain designer pink sofa got a Barbie dream deal when she found the perfect piece for her “girly” living room — for just 3% of the retail price.
“Even to this day, it’s a shock to me,” El-Bee, 32, a lifestyle influencer, told Fox News Digital.
“I still don’t believe it is real, even though I’m looking at the couch right now. I sit on it every day and I can’t believe it’s mine.”
El-Bee (last name omitted for privacy) said she found the perfect sofa to complete her fanciful pink living room — but she did not want to pay the nearly $4,000 price she saw at a local furniture shop or online.
It was a bright “Barbie pink” four-piece sectional sofa with fine tufting and clear Lucite legs — and El-Bee said she wanted it more than anything.
“I had been looking for the exact sofa,” she said.
“It was my dream sofa. I even had it saved on Facebook marketplace. And the lady I found it from in a store in Houston was selling it for $4,000, which is the price you see on Wayfair.”
El-Bee described her personal style as pink and “very girly and glamorous.”
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“I’m very into the old Regency style,” she said.
“Very coquette, royal core, princess core. It’s just a very, very feminine, girly style of decor.”
Though the sofa fit her style perfectly, El-Bee said she wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on such an expensive piece.
But one day last month, she got a text message from a friend — with a photo of the sofa at a Houston Goodwill for a jaw-dropping $129.
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El-Bee’s friend Karla Escobedo, 24, pulled up to the Goodwill to grab some items for a craft project.
The two share a love for clothes, jewelry and “anything pretty, including couches.”
“They were about to close,” Escobedo told Fox News Digital. “There weren’t that many people in there, so I checked out the front and then went around to the cups.”
Escobedo said she accidentally broke an Elvis Presley cup she’d picked up — and as she was looking for a worker to help her clean it up, she spotted the “big old pink couch.”
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“I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way,” she said of the pink sofa she knew her friend El-Bee would love.
“And I didn’t have my phone on me either. I went over to it and I saw the price tag and it was $129. I first thought it was $125 per section because it came in four different sections,” she added.
After checking it out, Escobedo realized the whole sofa was selling for $129 — so she ran to her car to grab her phone and sent a picture to El-Bee.
“If you go to her apartment, everything is pink in there,” Escobedo said.
“Even the dish soap. So, I knew she would love this. She actually already had pink couches, but they were just smaller. This one was big and grand and the price was amazing.”
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Escobedo admitted that, for a second, she thought about keeping the couch for herself. But she did think it would fit in her apartment.
“And I have boys in the house,” she said
El-Bee opened the message on Instagram right away — and said she was “freaking out.”
“As soon as she sent me the picture, I told her I doubted it would still be there by the time I could drive there,” El-Bee said.
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“I was like, ‘No, it’s going to be gone.’ I almost didn’t want to go and see it because I was thinking there’s no point.”
The store was closing shortly after El-Bee called the Goodwill; she even tried to pay over the phone, but they were not able to take her payment.
The store said she should arrive when it opened again at 9 a.m. the next day.
“So that whole night was like anxiety,” El-Bee said. “I’m like, ‘I’m not gonna get it. I know someone’s gonna get there before me.’”
She woke up at 5 a.m. and arrived at the store by 8:30 a.m. sharp.
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“As soon as the door opened, I ran straight in and got the tag off the couch,” El-Bee said.
“And if you take that piece of paper, then it’s yours, basically. I paid for it and they took the chair off the floor. It gives me goosebumps. I can’t believe I own that chair. And it’s the exact one that I dreamed of that I really wanted. And at that price!”
El-Bee, who goes by El-Bee London on Instagram and TikTok, shared her experience with viewers and got 1.8 million views.
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Amid the excitement, El-Bee said she did not consider how she would get such a large piece of furniture home.
After she realized she could not get even one section into her car or her dad’s car, they ended up renting a U-Haul.
“It was a nightmare,” El-Bee said. “And in the 100-degree Texas heat. My dad and I had to carry it one piece at a time. It was grueling.”
Once she got it home, El-Bee said she decided — with the help of some TikTok commenters — to have the sofa professionally cleaned.
She’d noticed some pet hair and her viewers warned of the potential for bedbugs.
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“The funny thing is the cleaning cost more than the actual couch,” she said . “The couch was $129 — and it cost $200 to clean.”
Another thing TikTokers enjoyed is that El-Bee got a deal and kept the item because she loved it — rather than reselling it for big bucks.
“A lot of comments on my video were thanking me for buying it and actually being someone who needs it and wants to use it,” she said.
“A lot of people would buy that and resell it for maybe at least $1,000. They know the worth of it.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Goodwill of Houston to learn who may have donated the item and why, but the organization did not immediately respond.
El-Bee’s followers have some theories of their own.
“Some people say it could be someone who passed away,” she said.
“Some people say it’s just like a spoiled child that, you know, was like, ‘Mom, I need a new couch.’ It looked almost perfect. That’s the comment that I get a lot — that it’s almost too good to be true.”
Now El-Bee said she spends a lot of time on her new pink sofa.
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“It fits what I want and it’s just perfect,” she said.