Sunlink Furniture City, South Area, Sunlink Furniture City, North Area, Louvre International Furniture Exhibition Centre.
The frame is the product, the cover is the decoration
Almost every sofa argument I’ve watched on a showroom floor was about the wrong thing. The buyer is feeling the fabric and the seller is happy to talk about the fabric, because fabric is easy to change and easy to price. The frame is what decides whether the thing survives five years in a rental apartment.
Ask what the frame is made from and then ask to see it. A serious showroom will have a cutaway or at least a photo of the frame before upholstery. Kiln dried hardwood is the answer you want. Solid pine is fine at a price. Plywood and particle board in a structural position is where returns come from.
Foshan has a real specialism here that outsiders miss: a lot of showrooms sell the same frame from the same frame maker under different names, with different foam and different covers on top. Once you work out who makes the frame, you can shop the cover separately and the whole negotiation changes.
What to press, sit on and pull
Sit in the corner of the sofa, not the middle. The middle is always supported. The corner is where a weak frame flexes and where you hear it.
Press hard into the arm with your palm. If you feel the timber edge through the padding, the customer will feel it too, and they’ll feel it on day one, not year three.
Lift one end. A sofa that’s suspiciously light is telling you what is inside it. Pull a cushion and look at the zip and the stitch density on the inside seam, which is the seam nobody bothers to fake.
Foam density is the number that actually matters
Ask for the foam density and get it in writing on the quote, not verbally. Two sofas that feel identical in a warm showroom can be very different after six months, and the difference is almost always foam.
Showrooms are warm, and warm foam feels softer and more generous than the same foam in a cold living room in February. Sit on it, then come back at the end of the day and sit on it again.
What changes in the container
Sofas take more space per unit of value than almost anything else you’ll ship, because a good part of what travels is air. This is why knock down legs matter more than they sound. A sofa that ships with its legs off can gain you real space across a full container.
Ask whether the model can ship with the back detached. Plenty can, and nobody mentions it unless you ask, because assembling it again at the other end is your problem and not theirs.
Check how they wrap the arms. Corner crush on arms is the single most common damage claim on sofa containers and it’s nearly always a packing problem rather than a handling problem.
Questions on sofas
What’s the minimum order for sofas in Foshan?
It varies more than people expect. Plenty of wholesale showrooms in the Lecong halls will take a single piece, especially for personal buyers furnishing an apartment. Factories quoting export prices usually want a mixed container rather than a fixed piece count, so the real question is whether you can fill the box, not whether you hit a magic number.
Can I mix different sofa models in one order?
Yes, and you usually should. Mixing models across a container is normal in Lecong and consolidators handle it every day. What costs you money is mixing suppliers who are far apart, because each collection point adds a truck movement.
Should I buy the sofa cover fabric separately?
If you’re ordering in volume and you already know your market, it’s worth pricing. Once you know who builds the frame you can often specify a different fabric on the same frame and land somewhere better than either showroom quoted you.
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