How to read a furniture quotation properly

A quotation is a description of a product with a number attached. When two quotations differ, it is usually because the descriptions differ, not because one supplier is cheaper. Reading them properly is mostly about noticing what is absent.

What should be on it

• Model code and a photograph. So there is no ambiguity about which piece.
• Product dimensions and packed dimensions. Both. Packed is what you ship.
• Materials, in specifics. Frame timber, board type, fabric name and grade, foam density, finish.
• Quantity the price is based on. A unit price without a quantity is not a price.
• Lead time. In days, from what starting point, and what triggers the clock.
• Packing description. What the carton is, what protection is inside it.
• Carton quantity and volume. How many pieces per carton and the cubic measure.
• Payment terms. Deposit, balance and what each is triggered by.
• Validity. How long the price holds.

The lines most often missing

Packed dimensions, foam density and the packing description, in roughly that order. All three are omitted routinely and all three change your real cost.

Packed dimensions decide how much of your container an item eats. Foam density decides whether the sofa is the same product as the one you compared it to. The packing description decides how much arrives undamaged. A quotation without them is not wrong, it is just incomplete, and asking for the missing lines is completely normal.

Making two quotations comparable

Write your own specification first, then ask both suppliers to quote against it. This inverts the usual process, where each supplier describes their own product in their own terms and you attempt to reconcile them afterwards.

When both are quoting the same frame material, the same foam density, the same fabric grade and the same packing, the price difference means something. Until then it is two different products with two different numbers.

Reading the total properly

Compare landed cost per unit, not the ex works price. That means unit price plus its share of the freight, and the freight share depends on volume. A piece that packs efficiently can beat a cheaper piece that packs badly, and that only becomes visible once volume is in the calculation.

Do that arithmetic on the shortlist before you order, not after. It regularly changes the ranking.

Questions to send back

Short and specific works best. What are the packed dimensions and pieces per carton. What foam density. What does the packing consist of. Is the fabric in stock. What is the lead time if the order is placed this month. What changes at double the quantity. Six lines, and the reply generally arrives with the whole picture.

A word about how quickly this goes

A quotation exchange conducted by email across a time zone gap takes a week and a half of round trips. The same set of questions asked in a showroom, in person, takes twenty minutes and produces better answers, because the person answering can go and look at something.

That is a large part of why a trip pays for itself. It is not only that you see the product. It is that a fortnight of correspondence collapses into an afternoon, and the version of the answer you get face to face tends to be more complete than the version that gets typed.