How an architect or interior designer chooses a furniture manufacturer to specify

A designer who specifies your furniture puts their own name under it. When the third armchair arrives a shade off, the client does not phone the workshop. The client phones the designer. So before writing you into a drawing, the designer raises objections, in passing and sometimes not aloud. This post sets out six of them in the words a designer would use, what each really asks, and the answer that lets them say yes. Take them as a rehearsal for your next meeting.

"Will the finish match what I approved?"

What the designer means: the chip held in the hand is not the piece that reaches the site. Laminate, veneer and PU all shift between a sample and a production run, and a cane panel can take stain differently from board to board.

Your answer is a physical object, not a promise. Ask the designer to sign and date a finish board bigger than a visiting card, keep its twin in the workshop, and hold each piece against the twin before it leaves. Send a photograph of the first piece against the board, taken in daylight. If the designer has to guess what your promise means, you will not be specified.

"Will your drawing be my drawing?"

What the designer means: the sketch is loose, and the workshop will fill the gaps with its own habits. A hinge ends up on the wrong side, or a chair seat comes out four centimetres lower than drawn.

Answer with a shop drawing: the sketch redrawn with every size, the hardware, the edge treatment and the finish code, sent for signature before any board is cut. Do not start cutting on a message that says "ok, go ahead". The signature is the point of the exercise.

"What happens when my client changes their mind?"

What the designer means: clients see a render and want the table longer. The designer needs to know when a change is cheap and when it stops being possible.

Answer with a rule that is printed on the drawing itself, so no one has to remember a phone call:

Rev 2, cafe lounge chairs, Block C.
Changes free until signed. After signing, charged at cost.
After cutting, not accepted.
Signed: ________   Date: ________

A small workshop with idle weeks can be softer, and say honestly what a change costs in days. What matters is that the designer knows the rule on the day of signing.

"Who comes to site if something is wrong?"

What the designer means: on the day the client walks through, a drawer rubs and a leg wobbles, and the designer does not want to hear "we will send someone next week".

Answer with one named person, a phone number and a list of what that person carries: a touch-up kit, a screwdriver, spare screws for the joints that loosen. Say the day you can reach a site in that city, and only if you will keep it. If you cannot reach a town quickly, say what you can do and let the designer plan around it.

"Why should I give you a whole flat when I have not seen your work?"

What the designer means: trying a new workshop on a full job is the kind of risk that costs a client.

Answer by making the risk small. Offer one piece, or one joinery item, to the designer's drawing, at a fair rate. The designer sees the finish, the packing and the manners, and the client sees only a single chair. A designer who trusts a workshop with one chair may give it a floor.

This does not suit every workshop. If you make from a fixed catalogue in volume, the one-piece trial costs you a setup you do not want. Say that you work from a range, and offer colours and hardware within it.

"Will you go to my client behind my back?"

What the designer means: the designer introduces you to a client, and a year later the client orders a wardrobe directly from you at a lower price. Many designers fear this more than any fault in the finish.

Answer in a sentence the designer can hold you to: any further order from a client they brought goes through them, unless they say otherwise. If you have agreed a commission, put it in writing with the designer, separate from the client's quotation, and ask your own adviser how it should be invoiced.

A worked case: Cuttack cane chairs for a Kolkata cafe

The names here are invented. A workshop in Cuttack makes cane-and-teak lounge chairs. A Kolkata designer specifies fourteen of them for a cafe from a stain chip. The workshop stains the batch a deeper brown than the chip, because the cane takes the stain heavily. The cafe owner sees it on the walk-through, and the designer takes the call.

For the designer's next scheme the workshop answered the objections in the order above. It asked for a signed stained cane sample and kept the twin. It sent shop drawings for signature, with the change rule printed on them. It photographed the first two chairs against the sample before dispatch and named the carpenter who would visit the site. The designer gave it a larger job, a restaurant's seating. The care was not free: the extra shop drawings and a second sample set cost about ₹14,000 in carpenter time and cane, and the workshop did not lower its price to cover it. The first cafe never reordered. The workshop, the designer and the figures are invented.

Which objection would lose you the job?

Take your last job for a designer and decide which of the six they could have raised. Pick the one you would have answered worst, and fix it before the next meeting, starting with the second or the fourth if you are unsure, because both depend on habits rather than skill. A pack the designer can lift from, built with capability presentations, helps once the habits are in place. The other buyers of furniture are on the furniture and wood products page. If you want help building the pack, tell us what you need.