Budget and delivery optimization for furniture sourcing tour to China

Many clients ask us why we don't work with consolidated cargo or don’t ship furniture by piece. Based on our long history and experience in China, small quantities and consolidated cargoes often lead to multiple damages and unhappy clients.

From our experience, a client needs 20000$ on average to furnish 150m² and more square footage building, apartment, office or a shop with quality furniture that will serve for years or even decades. We created this article to explain in details why we recommend customers to buy quality furniture and why our minimum order starts with 20000$.

Why did we set 20000$ as a bottom purchasing amount?

There is no profit in buying cheap furniture in China

There is no profit in buying the cheapest segment of furniture in China for yourself. If you are planning to buy furniture in China for yourself, aim for the mid and upper-mid price segment. There is no much point of purchasing plain cheap quality furniture in China, for example, a leather sofa for 400$. Apart from questionable quality, delivery and customs clearance expenses will be 300-500$.

The lowest price of furniture quality is bad everywhere

Manufacturers can provide a super-low price for furniture only if they use low-quality materials and low-skilled employees. The output of this mix is poor-quality furniture. Over the years we have had clients buying cheap furniture, but the result was always the same: defective furniture more suitable for garbage than for a house.

Don't wait for a miracle! You won't find bargain cheap quality furniture even in China. Factory quality control is not a cure-all decision. No matter how many times our manager does quality control, there won't be any major quality improvements since this manufacturer is simply not able to make quality products.

Why do we ship only full containers (dedicated to one customer)?

It is necessary to ship furniture from China by a full container because this is the only way to ensure careful and reliable delivery of your furniture without any damages. A full container doesn’t mean it’s filled to its capacity but simply booked for goods of only one customer. Goods are loaded in a warehouse and unloaded at the receiver's address. Only, in this case, you can avoid multiple cargo reshipping. Another advantage is optimized delivery time and a better cost.

Logistics and customs clearance cost optimization

Buying furniture in China will save your money if the square footage of the place is 150m² and more. In this case, full container optimizes delivery and shipping cost. For example, for a client from Spain, logistics (delivery of a 20-foot container) and customs clearance costs are at least 10000$. This price doesn’t even include furniture expenses.

We don’t suggest our customers coming to China for a furniture tour if clients’ home, office, shop etc. is too small or clients need only a few pieces of furniture.

For example, there are bigger odds of cargo damage, when delivering a small quality of furniture with groupage cargo, because it can be reshipped 2-4 times during transportation.

Let's see how groupage cargo is delivered. A customer wants to ship 4 sofas from Foshan to Spain: 600 kg load weight, 10m³ volume. Shipping this kind of cargo won’t make you any profit since the volume of a 20-foot container is 33m³, which means only 1/3 of a container will be filled. In this case, the only option is a groupage cargo. The delivery routine for a groupage cargo:

After getting through customs furniture:

• Is unloaded in an auto truck and delivered to the customer.
• Is picked up by a customer.
• Is unloaded into an auto truck, delivered to a railway station and placed an in temporary storage at the warehouse.
• Is placed in a temporary warehouse and waits for the delivery.

At the railway station, the furniture, depending on the recipient cities, is loaded into the train cars. After the car arrives at the railway station of a destination city, cargo is unloaded and placed for temporary storage at the warehouse. The client picks the furniture up from a warehouse and delivers it. Because only part of the container should be delivered to one client, the is much more fuss for getting the good delivered.

In Europe, for most cases, a full container for one client is delivered by an auto truck directly to a customer's address. As you can see a client's furniture can be reshipped many times while delivered by groupage cargo. It is extremely difficult to avoid any damage by groupage cargo delivery, and we do not recommend using it for delivering furniture to places far away from major seaports.

Conclusion

To get a positive experience buying furniture in China, get high-quality furniture from China in your city without damages, we offer you 4 useful tips that worked well with numerous customers from different countries.

Tips for buying furniture in China:

• Your minimum budget for furniture tour in China should not be less than 20000$.
• The total purchase budget including furniture, agency fees, shipping, and customs clearance should not be less than 35000$ - 50000$.
• Furniture shipping better proceeds with a full container.
• Avoid groupage cargos for delivering furniture.

Pros of working with us:

• Office and warehouse located in Foshan.
• Professional translators.
• Vast working experience
• Shipping from China worldwide
• Providing clients with all the paperwork needed for customs clearance in their countries
• In-house logistics department
• Legit contract
• Officially registered company In China

To purchase quality furniture that will serve you for many years, book a furniture tour in Foshan, China with our company now. For more information about the furniture tour in China, click here.