I ordered on day one because I wanted it to be over
That’s the truthful reason. Not efficiency. I was jet lagged, the place was enormous, and finding a showroom that had most of my list felt like being rescued.
The next morning I walked into a workshop three minutes away that made a better version of the same dining set for about the same money. I stood there doing the arithmetic and feeling slightly sick.
I didn’t cancel. The order was fine and the people had been kind to me. But I carried that feeling around for the rest of the trip, and it’s the reason I now give the first day away entirely.
I bought with my eyes
I spent my attention on covers and colours and finishes, because those are what a showroom puts in front of you and they were the only things I felt qualified to judge.
Nobody had told me that the frame is the product and the cover is the decoration. I didn’t know to ask what timber was under the fabric, or whether it was kiln dried, or what the foam density was. I didn’t know foam density was a number you could ask for.
The order that taught me this came back in year two with the seat cushions flattened. The customer was decent about it. I wasn’t decent about it in private.
I treated shipping as somebody else’s problem
I priced the furniture, agreed everything, and only then started thinking about the container. A container is a fixed cost, so everything you can’t fit into it makes everything inside it more expensive.
It hadn’t occurred to me to ask whether legs came off, whether a sofa back detached, whether the wardrobe shipped flat. On that first order, mostly they didn’t, because nobody asks and so nobody offers.
I’ve since watched somebody ask that question of every single item on a list, and watched the answer be yes far more often than I’d have guessed.
I measured the furniture and not the flat
I knew every dimension of everything I bought. I didn’t know the width of the stairwell in the buildings I deliver to.
There’s a particular kind of quiet on a phone call where a customer explains that the wardrobe is standing on the landing. I recommend avoiding it.
The change that fixed most of the rest
Everything on this page has the same root. I was making decisions without enough in front of me, usually late in the day, usually tired.
What changed it was going with somebody who knew the district. I stopped making tired decisions. Somebody else was watching the clock and the route, so I was still thinking clearly at four in the afternoon, which is historically when my judgement was at its least sharp.
Every item on this list stopped happening after that trip. Not gradually, and not because I’d become cleverer. The days were simply built properly.
What I’d say to somebody starting now
You’re going to get some of this wrong anyway. I did, everyone I know did, and the market is forgiving enough that none of it was fatal.
Slow the first day down. Ask for numbers rather than reassurance. Write your own doorway measurements on your phone. And be honest with yourself about what time of day you make bad decisions, because in this town it will be four in the afternoon and you’ll be very tired.
Things people ask me about this
What is the one thing you would change?
Ordering on the first day. Nearly everything else on this page follows from committing before I had anything to compare against.
Did any of it seriously damage the business?
No. That’s worth saying plainly, because a lot of writing about this makes it sound perilous. It cost money and it cost time, and the business was fine.
How long does this take to learn?
It took me four trips across two years, and I paid for that education in orders I’d place differently now. The same understanding was there in three days from somebody who already had it, which is the route I’d point anybody toward.