Click Here to Get the Buyer’s Guide: Furniture About to purchase furniture, or other home products, from suppliers in China? Keep reading, and learn what you must know about finding the right furniture suppliers, relevant trade shows and customization options. We also explain what furniture importers must know about fire retardancy regulations, quality control and shipping. When sourcing Furniture manufacturers online, there’s a variety of factors to use when assessing potential candidate suppliers. Below follows a few examples: Registered Capital: A low registered capital may indicate that the supplier is a small trading company. As there are no real benefits of buying from a trader, you want to avoid that. A Furniture manufacturer should have at least RMB 1,000,000 in registered capital, which is specified in their business license. Business Scope: Possibly even more telling than the Registered Capital, the Business scope explains what the company was set out to do.
Look for “furniture” and “manufacturing”, or “production”, to assess if the supplier is a true manufacturer. Traders, on the other hand, tend to have business scopes, including a wide range of very different products, and include terms such as “Wholesale”. Quality Management System: A Quality Management System, for example, ISO 9001, is implemented to track and prevent quality issues. Why does this matter? Because it only applies to manufacturers, not traders. When buying furniture from Chinese suppliers, why is it important to first filter suppliers? Because the majority of Furniture manufacturers are not geared towards developed markets, offering the quality options and stability you need to compete. If you don’t feel like browsing supplier listing online, you may want to consider visiting a Home products trade show in Mainland China or Hong Kong. Below follows a summary of relevant, annual, trade fairs in the Furniture and home products industry: What differs a retailer, or even wholesaler, from an OEM manufacturer?
When you buy a product from a retailer, take Ikea for example, you know that their products are made according to the very same specification sheet. There is no variation in terms of materials, design, dimensions and functions. Yet, many importers of home products, including furniture, make the assumption that this is how OEM manufacturers in China, also operates. OEM manufacturers operate according to a ‘make to order’ principle. While they may have “catalog products”, these are mere references, at best. What this means for you, is that you must provide the supplier with a spec sheet – even if the product is based on a factory design. There is no uniform Furniture spec sheet template that can be used. However, below follows a few examples of what you must include in your specification sheet: In many markets, there are mandatory Fire Retardancy Regulations, applicable to various types of furniture. In the United States, there’s no federal framework to which American importers must comply.
However, California Technical Bulletin 117 (TB117) has become ‘de facto’ mandatory, as it is asked for by both retailers and customers. However, In the European Union, there are mandatory Fire safety standards, to which buyers are forced to comply. Below follows an overview: Keep in mind that you must communicate to the supplier, to which standards your product must be complied with. A few years ago, I remember how we performed a quality inspection on upholstered furniture in Hangzhou. As we started testing the fire retardancy of the cover fabric, it turned out that the goods were in no way going to pass a third party audit. However, the present sales manager, quickly brushed off any responsibility. Instantly, he underlined that they are indeed capable of ensuring compliance with all European and American substance and fire retardancy standard, but that this customer did not communicate that their product had to be compliant with a certain standard. Hence, the procurement officers, working in the factory, did not make this specific request to their subcontractor for cover fabrics… and indeed, they didn’t ask either, so the result was a batch of a non-compliant goods.
As such, you must first assess which regulations apply to home products in your market, and then communicate this requirement to your manufacturer. To ensure that your supplier is not shipping substandard or damaged goods, which is perfectly possible, you must hire a quality inspector to check up on the goods. There are several companies offering quality control services, already in China. However, you need to communicate what they should look for. Below follows explanations of two of critical checkpoints, when importing furniture from China: Visual Inspection: Check for potential damages, or usage of incorrect materials and components. Fire retardancy testing: While most compliance tests can only be carried out in a laboratory, fire retardancy of fabrics can be checked just as well with a lighter and a stopwatch. Furniture is heavy, and can easily break under the weight of stacked units. Many manufacturers understand this, while others routinely fail to apply common sense when packing furniture.
As such, I suggest that you request packing, as following: As furniture is not only heavy, but also taking up quite a bit of space, most buyers in this segment base their imported volumes on a container basis, rather than a unit bases. Hence, request your supplier to quote a volume based on an FCL 20’’ or 40’’ HQ container, and let them specify the number of units that can be loaded in each.Assessed supplier has been assessed by giving buyers in-depth details and authoritative information about suppliers for free, to help buyers source smarter and safer. Philippe Starck (born January 18, 1949)[1] is a French designer known since the start of his career in the 1980s for his interior, product, industrial and architectural design including furniture and objects that have simple but inventive structures. The son of an aeronautical engineer, Starck studied at the École Camondo in Paris. An inflatable structure he imagined in 1969 was a first incursion into questions of materiality, and an early indicator of Starck's interest in where and how people live.
Starck's designs brought him to the attention of Pierre Cardin who offered him a job as artistic director of his publishing house. While working for Cardin, Starck set up his first industrial design company, Starck Product – which he later renamed Ubik[4] after Philip K. Dick's novel – and began working with manufacturers in Italy – Driade, Alessi, Kartell – and internationally, including Austria's Drimmer, Vitra in Switzerland and Spain's Disform. His concept of democratic design led him to focus on mass-produced consumer goods rather than one-off pieces, seeking ways to reduce cost and improve quality in mass-market goods. In 1983, the French President François Mitterrand, on the recommendation of his Minister of Culture Jack Lang, chose Starck to refurbish the president's private apartments at the Élysée. The following year he designed the Café Costes. Starck's output expanded to include furniture, decoration, architecture, street furniture, industry (wind turbines, photo booths), bathroom fittings, kitchens, floor and wall coverings, lighting, domestic appliances, office equipment such as staplers, utensils (including a juice squeezer and a toothbrush), tableware, clothing, accessories (shoes, eyewear, luggage, watches) toys, glassware (perfume bottles, mirrors), graphic design and publishing, even food (Panzani pasta, Lenôtre Yule log)
, and vehicles for land, sea, air and space (bikes, motorbikes, yachts, planes). The buildings he designed in Japan, starting in 1989, went against the grain of traditional forms. The first, Nani Nani, in Tokyo, is an anthropomorphic structure, clad in a living material that evolves over time. The thesis being: design should take its place within the environment but without impinging on it; an object must serve its context and become part of it. A year later he designed the Asahi Beer Hall in Tokyo, a building topped with a golden flame. This was followed in 1992 by Le Baron Vert office complex in Osaka. Starck's buildings, while dedicated to work, are no less instilled with life and its constant effervescence. In France he designed the extension of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris (1998). The Alhondiga, a more recent project, is a 43,000 sq. m culture and leisure venue in Bilbao that opened in 2010.[7] Starck, who loves ships and the sea, designed the new infrastructure for the Port Adriano harbour on the south-west bay of Palma de Mallorca, and was also artistic director for the interior.
It opened in April 2012. He also designed Steve Jobs' yacht, Venus, which launched in October 2012. For the past thirty years Philippe Starck has been designing hotels all over the world, including the Royalton in New York in 1988, the Delano in Miami in 1995, the Mondrian in Los Angeles, the St Martin's Lane in London in 1999, the Sanderson, also in London, in 2000, and the complete 2001 renovation of the historic Clift in San Francisco with its updated art-deco bar, the Redwood Room.[9] In South America, Philippe Starck designed the inside and outside of the Hotel Fasano in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 using materials such as wood, glass and marble. He then turned his attention to luxury hotels: in 2008, Hôtel Meurice and the Royal Monceau in 2010. From 1990, Philippe Starck has worked to democratize quality "designer" hotels, beginning with the Paramount in New York. Offering rooms at $100/night, it became a classic in its genre. In 2008, Starck brought this humanist concept to Paris as the Mama Shelter.
A second Mama Shelter opened in Marseille in 2012. In April 2015, Mama Shelter had six hotels with new locations in Bordeaux, Istanbul, Los Angeles and Lyon. In 2010, Philippe Starck opened the Co(o)riche Hotel at the Dune du Pyla. In North America, in the 2000s, Philippe Starck with entrepreneur Sam Nazarian created the concept for SLS, a chain of luxury hotels. The Bazaar lobby at SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills quickly became a public space with its tapas restaurants, Norwegian health bar, pâtisserie and a Moss concept store. Mama Shelter, Marseille (France), 2012 Philippe Starck has several restaurants to his credit: Bon (2000), Mori Venice Bar (2006) and Le Paradis du Fruit (2009) in France, and the notable launch of Katsuya in Los Angeles in 2006, the first in a series of Japanese restaurants. The A'trego opened in Cap d'Ail in 2011. He designed the interior and exterior of Ma Cocotte, a restaurant that launched in September 2012 at the Saint-Ouen flea market near Paris.
In 2013, he designed Miss Ko, an Asian-centric concept restaurant in Paris. In November 2011, Lodha Group appointed Phillippe Starck for "yoo inspired by Starck", to design the residential development at New Cuffe Parade, Mumbai. In November 2012, Starck published his first book of interviews, Impression d'Ailleurs, with Gilles Vanderpooten. In it, he expresses his view of the challenges facing the world to come – ecology, solidarity, youth, science – and, as a humanist, suggests ways we can make a difference. His work is seen in the collections of European and American museums, including the Musée National d'Art Moderne (to which he has donated several pieces, in particular prototypes) the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the MOMA and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, the Vitra Design Museum in Basel and the Design Museum in London. More than 660 of his designs were inventoried in French public collections in 2011. Philippe Starck was the first designer to participate in the TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment & Design).
Alongside his work Philippe Starck partnered with Moustache Bikes for the M.A.S.S. (Mud, Asphalt, Sand and Snow). A portfolio of four e-bikes that use a Bosch electrical engine and battery pack. Starck helped design the Xiaomi Mi MIX smartphone, notable for having a 6.4-inch "whole surface screen". Kartell Tic Tac® Wall Clock by Philippe Starck Through his "democratic design" concept, Starck has campaigned for well-designed objects that are not just aimed for upper-tiered incomes. He has expressed this as a utopian ideal,[18] approached in practice by increasing production quantities to cut costs and by using mail-order, via Les 3 Suisses. In January 2013 he redesigned the Navigo travel pass. One of the ways Philippe Starck has economized costs for the public,[20] is his plastic-furniture line, producing pieces such as the Kartell Louis Ghost chair, over a million of which have been sold. He has also been involved in the development of Fluocaril toothbrushes to bathroom fittings for Duravit, Hansgrohe, Hoesch and Axor, from Alessi's Juicy Salif lemon squeezer to Zikmu speakers, Zik headphones by Parrot, Laguiole knives, Starckeyes glasses by Mikli and the Marie Coquine lamp for Baccarat.
Sometimes pointed political messages[22] can be found in projects, such as the subversive Gun Lamp (Flos, 2005), the Superarchimoon floor lamp (Flos, 2000), in fact a giant architect's lamp standing 217 centimetres high, the Haaa!!! lamps he imagined with the American artist Jenny Holzer (Flos/Baccarat, 2009) and the chandeliers in the Darkside collection, featuring the Zenith chandelier (Baccarat, 2005). With environment and ecological concerns, he created the Good Goods catalogue with La Redoute. He also set up AOA, an organic food company. His latest eco-friendly designs are the V+ Volteis electric car with Volteis, the Pibal bike for the City of Bordeaux, Zartan chairs for Magis, and Broom by Emeco. ^ "The who's who of design. Name: Starck Philippe, born 18 January 1949, son of Andre Starck, aeronautics engineer. His family originally coming from Alsace region, before his grand father had moved to Paris. Studies: Ecole Camondo in Paris. Profession: designer, boss of Ubik.