Relationship
We come in person. We speak the language. We build over years. Sourcing is not done from a distance.
01The standard
Three criteria, inseparable.
This is how we keep a manufacturer — and how we let one go.
Quality
On-site audit, samples, inspection before every shipment. We answer for every manufacturer we introduce.
Transparency
Proven origin, from the timber to the factory. Everyone knows how we work and on what terms we are remunerated.
All three, or nothing.
How it runs.
Our specialty: furniture. Our ground: Vietnam.
Identify the manufacturers
A short list, built on the ground and through visits — never from a directory.
Audit on site
Capacity, machinery, workforce, safety, order book. What can be seen, and what can be verified.
Approve the samples
Prototype, counter-sample, written tolerances. What is approved is what gets produced.
Establish origin
Chain of custody, species, certifications. Ready for the European rules taking effect in 2026.
See it through to delivery
Pre-shipment inspection, documents, follow-up to the arrival port. Your questions are answered the same day.
Record the run
Dates, volumes, defects, delays, how a problem was settled. Every order is written back into the manufacturer’s file.
What is actually in the file.
Two documents decide whether an order is possible. Neither of them is a formality.
The origin file
What Europe asks to see.
- The species, botanical name included — acacia, rubberwood, eucalyptus, teak.
- The forest or plantation the lot came from, with geolocated plots.
- Certificates where they exist, and the chain-of-custody claim written on the invoice.
- The factory that actually cut the wood — not the trading house above it.
- The lot, tied to the container, so the file still stands up to a check two years later.
The audit sheet
What we verify on site.
- Capacity in containers per month, and what is already booked.
- The kilns: how many, at what temperature, and the moisture actually measured on the day.
- Joinery, D4 glue where the range demands it, stainless hardware for outdoor.
- The finishing line, the sanding, and what happens to a rejected piece.
- Workforce, safety, and the order book — who else the factory answers to.
- Whether the building we are standing in is the one that will make the order.
Ask us for the audit sheet we use. We will send it before you decide anything.
The register.
Every manufacturer we meet enters a file. Few of them stay in it.
How it fills
We register for the long term.
- Every manufacturer of interest is recorded: capacity, species, machinery, and the people who run it.
- We come back. A relationship is built over years and visits, not over one order.
- Partnerships are put in writing — volumes, seasons, terms, exclusivity when it has been earned.
How it empties
We keep only the reliable.
- Every collaboration is scored against the record: defects, delays, and honesty when something goes wrong.
- A manufacturer that slips twice leaves the list — and is told why.
- What reaches a buyer is the short list that survived the record.
High-quality partnerships, or none.
Your file does not leave this desk.
Prices, drawings, plots, capacity, the names above you and below you. A sourcing desk holds the most sensitive file in the trade, and holding it properly is part of the work — not a question for someone else.
The standard we are moving onto ML-KEM-768 · FIPS 203
In writing, before you send anything
A confidentiality agreement, signed by us first and on request, before a drawing or a price list leaves your side. It says what we hold, what we may put in front of a buyer, and what becomes of the file if we stop working together.
Nothing crosses between clients
One manufacturer’s costs are never shown to another. A buyer’s programme — its prices, its short list — stays inside that programme. We work with few enough clients that this is a rule we can keep, not a policy we publish.
Encrypted, and kept that way
Your file is encrypted where it rests, and we will open an encrypted channel for anything you would rather not put in an email. Records copied today can still be read by a quantum machine years from now, so we follow the post-quantum standards as they are ratified and move onto them early rather than late.
Your prices are yours. They go no further.
The habit is older than the house: our direction came to furniture from software, where cryptography was a daily working tool and a leaked key ended companies. That reflex came with us — unusual in this trade, and deliberate.
Terms of remuneration.
Set down here, rather than left to a first call.
You are never invoiced
No retainer, and no fee for being visited, audited, introduced or followed. Our commission is invoiced to the buyer, never to the manufacturer — nothing comes out of your pocket at any point.
When it falls due
A commission on the order, invoiced to the buyer once it has shipped, against the same documents as the order itself. One rate, agreed in writing before the first container.
Not on your price
We work on commission, not on resale. The price you set is the price the buyer sees, and our fee sits beside it rather than inside it.
One rate, agreed before the first order.