Comfort Is A Business

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25 June 2018. Everyone everywhere needs furniture. Squashy sofas and comfortable recliners. Thick mattresses on padded divans. Sturdy oak chairs to match a sturdy oak table. Furniture is a necessity in every household, dorm room, business office and restaurant in the world, so a furniture business is an innovative idea when you want to strike out on your own. There are so many avenues that you can go down, with niches in everything from style to fabric to material of the furniture altogether. To be successful as a leader in furniture, you need to fill a need that other places just aren’t meeting.

(Terje Sollie, Pexels.com)

Once you’ve worked out the type of furniture that you want to sell, you need to learn how to make it safe. Employing the right manufacturers is a start, but you also need to ensure that you have the right textile testing laboratory on speed dial. This is so that you can meet your own quality standards and those set out by the law. There are certain themes to furniture stores; some specialise in kitchen furniture with lots of wood and vinyl, while others design and sell beds and think about how comfort can impact buyers. Identifying your niche can help you to take the next step for your new furniture business: writing a business plan.

Any seasoned business leader will know how important a business plan is. You should include all your goals, the mission of your company and the way that you hope to achieve these goals. You should have also identified factories, manufacturers, design companies and financial forecasts so that you can include all of this in your plan. The only way to get firm offers of finance is to complete a business plan with everything that you think is pertinent to your furniture business. There are things to consider when it comes to the design and build of furniture, and you have to meet safety standards and legal standards – choosing the right materials that aren’t too cheap is so important and identifying the suppliers and wholesalers of these in your business plan should be done.

Next is finding a location for your business. You may only need a warehouse if you choose to concentrate on an online service, but if you want to advertise your services on the high street, you will need to look at roadside store locations. Think about this carefully, as your location choice will be determined by your budget and whether you could afford the higher rent of a commercial property in a popular area. If you plan to deliver furniture as part of your business model, you’ll also need to source vehicles large enough to hold the furniture that you design, make and sell. Keeping records of everything and purchasing the right insurance is vital.

Running a business is difficult, exciting and the start of something that could grow massively. Toeing the line with your manufacturing processes, sticking to budget and learning how to run a successful furniture business is all down to you.

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