Chapter 94 is the category where freight, not factory price, decides whether the deal works: a sofa or a bookcase is bought by the cubic metre long before anyone argues about the unit cost. It is also the category where a product can be technically correct and still land as scrap, because moisture content, carton engineering and container fill are design decisions taken at specification stage, not logistics problems solved at the port.
Before the product is costed, the pack is costed. We fix outer carton dimensions, work out how many pieces fit a 40' high cube against the realistic loadable volume rather than the nominal figure, and convert everything to a landed cost per cubic metre. A design that cannot be cubed efficiently is rejected at that point, not after the first container.
Case goods, upholstery, metal fabrication and lighting assembly are four different industries that all attend the same fairs. We look for the process that actually determines quality being in-house — the panel line and edgebander, the foam cutting and sewing floor, the powder-coat line, the driver and SMT assembly — and treat anything subcontracted as a separate supplier to be audited.
Finished-product reports say little. We ask for the board grade and its formaldehyde emission class, the timber species and kiln moisture content, foam density and hardness, fabric abrasion and colour fastness reports, the LED driver make and model, and the glass tempering certificate. Named components with named test reports are what a technical file is built from.
Sealed samples are made in pairs, one unit held in the destination market and one at the factory, with fabric, board and finish swatches split and sealed alongside them. Colour is approved in a light box under a controlled source, not under factory fluorescents, because grain, stain and fabric dye lots all shift between runs. Production is compared against that physical sample, never against the photographs the factory sends.
Transit packaging is specified and tested before the first order: corrugated board with a stated edge crush rating, EPE or moulded corners, edge protection on high panels, and a drop and vibration sequence run to a recognised transit-test protocol. The fittings bag is counted and the assembly instruction is drawn, because missing hardware and unreadable instructions generate more returns in this category than defects do.
We write the specification as a component list with tolerances, not a description: board type and thickness, edge banding, timber species and moisture band, foam density and indentation hardness, fabric composition with abrasion and pilling requirements, hardware grade and finish, driver, light source, colour temperature and colour-rendering target. Tooling — moulds for plastic components, welding jigs, extrusion dies for aluminium profiles — is quoted and its ownership written down before it is cut.
Surface performance is designed in and then tested: resistance to cold liquids, to dry heat and to damp heat, plus scratch resistance for tops that will take a glass and a hot plate. Outdoor programmes get a salt-spray requirement on the coating and a UV expectation on the textile. For lighting we specify the binning tolerance for colour consistency, the flicker behaviour and the lumen-maintenance evidence from the chip and driver suppliers rather than the assembler's marketing sheet.
Packaging is developed alongside the product, not after it. We work the carton down to the smallest module the product and the pallet will take, check pallet and container fit, decide where knock-down structure beats assembled convenience, and specify the interior protection at the points that actually fail — corners, protruding legs, glass and mirror, and the exposed edge of a high-gloss panel. Roll-packed goods get a compression and recovery specification so the customer is not the first person to open one.
One product, several label sets. That means Serbian-language declaration text naming the importer, Arabic panels for the Gulf, bilingual Chinese and English for Hong Kong, simplified Chinese for the mainland, the energy label and registration reference for light sources into the EU, national recycling and sorting marks where they apply, and carton marking that a warehouse in Belgrade and a warehouse in Singapore can both read. Assembly instructions are drawn to be language-free wherever the geometry allows it.
The technical file is written on our side and issued to the factory, rather than accepted from it. That includes the component list, the test plan, the packaging drawing, the labelling artwork and the inspection criteria. When a supplier is changed, the specification stays and the factory changes — which is the difference between a programme and a purchase.
We book a during-production check at roughly the first fifth of the run and a pre-shipment inspection to a statistical sampling plan with agreed acceptance levels, carried out by an accredited firm. The inspector measures carton dimensions, weighs the fill, meters timber moisture on the floor and opens fitting bags. The balance is held until the report is accepted, and the container does not load on a conditional pass.
We build the load plan ourselves, decide the SKU mix per container so a slow line does not travel half-empty, and set the stack and dunnage rules for mixed-density cargo — nothing heavy on upholstery, glass carried upright, high panels braced against the door. Loading photographs are reviewed against the plan before the doors close.
Declaration of conformity, accredited test reports, a China–Serbia FTA certificate of origin on the Belgrade lane, heat-treatment marking on any solid-wood packing, species documentation where a listed timber is involved, energy-label and producer-responsibility registration references, and the due-diligence statement reference where wood is in scope. The file is complete before the container is booked, because in this category the goods clear or they sit accruing demurrage.
We own brands and sell into our own markets, so we hold the end of the chain a broker never touches: spare fittings and replacement hardware kits shipped with the order, replacement glass and remote handsets held as service stock, a claims route back to the factory with photographic evidence, and packaging revised when the damage pattern says the pack is wrong rather than the carrier.
The document set below is what this category needs to clear. We raise it rather than forwarding a checklist.
The bulk of this category loads FCL in southern China and the Yangtze delta and runs west to Koper and Rijeka for Serbia and the Adriatic hinterland, and to Leixões, Sines and the North European ports for the EU — sea only, because at this density an air-freight quotation prices the product out of its own shelf. Eastbound is real trade too: European and Portuguese design furniture, lighting and bed linen move into Hong Kong, Singapore and the mainland, with a separate lane into Jebel Ali and Jeddah, where duty is rarely the obstacle and the work is CCC and Registered Supplier status on the lighting, GB 18401 on the bed linen, bilingual labelling on everything and the fact that those markets buy assembled goods and small, frequent consignments rather than flat-packed pallets.
We can hold the ex-works price for a defined volume and period once the specification is sealed, because that part is a factory commitment we negotiate. Ocean freight is not ours to fix: rates move with peak-season surcharges and general rate increases, and in a cube-driven category that swing is larger than the factory margin. So we quote the product price and the freight assumption separately and tell you which one is exposed, rather than burying a guess in a single landed number.
Whoever paid for them, and it should be written down before they are cut. Where you fund tooling we contract for your ownership, physical identification and a right of removal, and we record where each tool sits. This matters more in this category than most, because a lighting body, an injection-moulded component or a welding jig is often the only thing that makes a design yours rather than a catalogue item the factory sells to anyone.
We open a claim with photographic evidence at the point of unpacking — carton condition first, then contents, then the damage pattern across the load. If the damage is concentrated at the same corner or the same panel across many units, the pack is wrong and we revise the carton and interior protection at the factory's cost or ours, not yours. If it is carrier handling, the load plan and loading photographs are the evidence the claim needs, which is one reason we keep them.
For an existing model in the factory's own range, the minimum is usually a colour or fabric run rather than a container. For anything with new tooling, a bespoke carton or your own labelling, the minimum is set by whichever of those is most expensive to set up — normally the tooling or the board run. In practice we build first orders as mixed containers across several models so a new line can be tested at real retail volumes without committing a container to one SKU.
Tell us the product, the origin and the destination. We come back with the classification, the document set and a realistic timeline.
Leave three lines and we will come back with the corridor, the customs position and a realistic timeline for whatever you are moving.