Do not buy anything on day one
This is the only piece of advice on this page I would call a rule. Day one is a survey. You’re learning what things cost, who has what, and how far apart the halls are. Buyers who order on day one almost always see the same item cheaper or better on day two, and then they’ve to decide whether to eat the deposit or live with the mistake.
It feels wasteful. It isn’t. The first day is what makes the next two productive.
Day one: survey
Start with the strip and get a sense of the geography. You can’t walk Lecong, so plan on taxis between halls and accept that as a cost.
Walk one budget hall and one premium hall on the same day, in that order. Doing the cheap one first resets your sense of what a sofa costs, and every price you hear afterwards lands in context. Doing it the other way round makes everything look like a bargain, which is exactly how people overspend.
Collect name cards from everyone, including showrooms you’ve no intention of buying from. Half of sourcing this market is having somebody to message in six months when a customer asks for something unusual.
Day two: shortlist and quote
Go back to the four or five showrooms that were genuinely interesting and get real quotes. A real quote has the model, the material, the dimensions, the packing method, the production time and the price. Anything less is a number, not a quote.
Ask every one of them the same questions in the same order. It feels mechanical and it’s the only way the quotes end up comparable.
Take photographs of the label and the tag, not just the product. A month later, a photo of a sofa with no reference on it’s almost useless.
Day three: negotiate and decide
Now you’ve comparable quotes and you know the range, so the negotiation is about real alternatives rather than bluffing. Tell people what you’ve been quoted elsewhere. It’s normal here and it works better than pretending you haven’t been looking.
Leave the last afternoon empty. Something will need a second visit, a measurement you forgot, or a conversation with a consolidator, and a trip with no slack in it ends with a rushed decision.
What to actually bring
A tape measure, because you’ll use it constantly and asking to borrow one gets old. A power bank, because you’ll be photographing all day. Comfortable shoes that you don’t mind ruining.
Your destination measurements written down: doorway width, lift dimensions, stair turn. Deciding on a wardrobe and then discovering it won’t go up the stairs is a very expensive way to learn this.
Business cards. Nobody expects a brochure, but a card gets you taken seriously in about two seconds and its absence is noticed.