On a development or a hospitality refurbishment, the furniture design decisions are usually settled long before the pieces need to be in the building. The distance between those two dates is where the cost sits — and it is a procurement problem rather than a design one.
This article takes the procurement-side view: what to establish before a furniture package is committed, and where the avoidable costs tend to hide.
Repeatability: what can actually be reordered
The first question on any multi-plot or multi-site specification is which line items are genuinely repeatable.
Some pieces are held in stock and can be reordered consistently. Some are made to order in natural materials — alabaster, stone, timber, and to a degree textiles — where batch variation is real rather than theoretical. Some are seasonal or subject to discontinuation.
You should know which category each line item falls into before it enters a standard specification, particularly one that will be reissued for a second phase six months later. Ask the supplier directly, and ask them to confirm whether it is a continuing line.
Lead-time visibility per line, not averaged
A single lead-time figure across a mixed package is close to useless, because it conceals the one item that will determine the delivery date.
Across our own range the spread is wide: in-stock Tommy Franks pieces are delivered within three working days; Araco Lumière lighting is handcrafted to order at approximately five to seven weeks; and Araco Atelier upholstery is made to order at approximately eight to twelve weeks.
Get lead times line by line, identify the longest, and treat that date as the constraint the rest of the programme sequences behind.
Documentation that goes straight into a schedule
Procurement runs on documentation rather than inspiration. What you want from a supplier, in a form you can paste into a schedule without re-typing:
- Current dimensions per item, with packed dimensions where access is tight
- Materials, finishes and construction detail
- Lamping and technical data on lighting
- Lead time per line, dated
- Whether the item is stock, made to order, or a continuing line
Delivery into a live site
A multi-item delivery into a building under construction is a different exercise from a single residential delivery, and the difference is mostly access and timing.
Establish early: whether there is a loading window, whether there is a lift and its car dimensions, whether pieces can be stored on site or must arrive on the day of placement, and who is present to receive them. All large furniture orders from us are delivered by our specialist two-person logistics partners.
Storage is the usual hidden cost. Ordering everything at once so nothing is late means paying to store what arrived early. Sequencing against the lead times avoids that.
Phasing on hospitality projects
Refurbishments rarely close a whole property, so furniture arrives floor by floor or wing by wing. That has three consequences worth planning for.
Reordering is inevitable, so continuing-line confirmation matters more than on a single-phase job. Batch consistency across phases has to be agreed with the supplier at the outset where natural materials are involved. And each phase has its own access and delivery window, which means the delivery plan is several plans rather than one.
Contingency, proportioned to complexity
Contingency on a furniture package should scale with the number of line items and the number of suppliers, not sit at a fixed two weeks regardless.
A fifteen-item package has fifteen independent opportunities to slip. Decide in advance which items are substitutable and which are not, so that a late problem is a decision rather than a scramble. And re-run the lead times whenever the handover date moves — this is the single most common cause of a late furniture package, and the easiest to avoid.
Commercial terms worth clarifying early
Trade pricing at Araco Interiors is prepared per project rather than published as one fixed discount, because what we can offer varies by brand, by product and by quantity. Trade pricing should not be assumed to combine with published promotions. Applications for trade membership are reviewed individually and approval is not automatic.
Also worth establishing early on any supplier: the returns position on made-to-order items. Ours is that eligible items can be returned within 30 days in original condition, but made-to-order pieces cannot be returned once production has started — which is a further argument for confirming dimensions, finishes and quantities before an order is placed.
Project support
Araco Trade & Projects provides project-led pricing, sourcing assistance, specification detail, samples where the relevant brand offers them, and delivery planning across multi-item and phased orders, with one named point of contact throughout. Apply for trade membership, or contact the trade team at trade@aracointeriors.com or on 020 4524 7265.