5 Things to Check With Your Furniture Supplier Before Placing An Order

Designing and creating the ideal work environment is both challenging and rewarding. Steering the client through the selection process takes skill and experience and once it’s signed and sealed, all you’re waiting for is the delivery but what if it’s delayed? Delays to projects can be incredibly disruptive as well as tarnishing your hard-won reputation with your customer. Here are 5 main reasons why a supplier fails to deliver; Over Promise Fluctuations in capacity are difficult to manage for any manufacturing plant and periods of high throughput are a particular challenge. This is when systems are stretched to the limit and there is no room to move. Often the temptation is to keep saying yes to new business in the hopes that it will get made somehow. Taking on too much will often do more harm than good as the knock-on effect can mean that little bit extra disrupts everything else. Machinery breakdown One very common reason why projects suffer long delays is the malfunction or complete breakdown of machinery. If the machine responsible for producing or refining just one component of furniture requires maintenance, significant delays will be incurred. Often an entire production line will need to be halted whilst an engineer identifies and resolves the issue before testing the machine. Running out of stock Believe it or not, running out of stock can be a major issue, especially when a piece of furniture or storage component becomes popular or very large orders are secured. Depending on the supply chain, lead times on stock vary wildly and it’s often out of the control of the distributor’s hands. This creates a frustrating and stressful chain of communication between multiple parties involved (often in multiple languages!) Power outages Power outages are common in all industries. Quite often they are completely unavoidable and is an outage affecting a large area of property and businesses. If you’ve ever experienced one, you’ll know they can be very disruptive and can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. When so many of the processes factories and distribution centres carry out rely upon power, having an alternative power supply can mean the difference between carrying on as normal and complete shut down of operations. Single supplier of key components Many of the projects delivered rely upon key components. The shortage of one of these key components can completely undermine an otherwise smooth and well-organised operation. The over-reliance on one primary source of a key component is the downfall of many manufactures in multiple industries. Similar to the stock issue, a shortage results in frustrating delays along the supply chain. Commitment to quality When it comes to tight deadlines, you need a company that has the experience to foresee issues and have pre-emptive solutions in place. Our 35 years of experience and commitment to delivering excellent customer satisfaction means Spacestor has identified potential pitfalls when it comes to delivering your project before deadline and taken the steps the overcome them, including:

  • Resource planning – the total order value is watched continually and required production capacity is forecasted carefully. During periods of high capacity extra measures are taken to ensure we can still deliver all orders on time. In extreme cases we have even turned away orders to make sure we can deliver on those we have committed to.
  • Duplicate production machinery – in short, if we can’t do without it, then we have more than one of them. If we do suffer maintenance issues, we can simply switch machines and keep going.
  • 90,000 square foot facility - enabling us to hold large quantities of stock at all times. In addition, the enquiry pipeline and seasonal fluctuations are examined and accounted for.
  • State of the art back up power generator – so no power outages cease or production line
  • Relationships with multiple suppliers of key components - providing us the flexibility in sourcing the elements for your project

We’d love to help you and your business to find the right office furniture and storage solutions and ensure they’re delivered on time, whatever the weather! Click here to contact us to find out how Spacestor can help you.