By: Jody Timmer
The first month we talked about the accounting and legal end of the Interior Design business. The second month we touched on qualifying your clients. In this final article, we are going to look at the design end. There are a lot of terms that are used in this business and not everyone is familiar with them. I will cover a few of the major ones to help you understand the design language a little better.
I am constantly sending notices to designers regarding the ESD of their order or asking them if they want a CFA. I have found that not everyone knows what I am talking about. There is a big difference between ETA and ESD. ETA refers to the estimated time of arrival of an order. This ETA may be to the vendor, to the delivery service or to the ship to. The ESD refers to the estimated ship date of your order. This is the estimated date that the order will ship from the vendor. Most of our vendors use ESDs, so that is what you get from us. The ESD is sometimes given as “the week of”.
Do you know the difference between a memo and a CFA? A memo or sample is what you can get from the showrooms or vendors to take to your client. It is usually a small sample of the fabric that you have seen in the showroom. A CFA is a cutting for approval. This is a small sample of the fabric from the exact bolt that your yardage will be cut from. This is a must for all designers who don’t want to deal with problems on the back end when ordering fabric. For instance, dye lots vary and without a CFA, you are stuck with the numerous yards of fabric that you ordered if it is any shade of the color it is supposed to be. Some say the color isn’t a real factor so why do I need a cutting? Some of the fabrics in our showroom are over 10 years old. Our vendors don’t necessarily update us when they change a fabric’s contents. Years ago a designer ordered a CFA of a chintz floral fabric. The CFA was the same floral pattern, but it was now being made on a linen fabric. Big difference! Always explain to your client what a CFA is and why you are getting one. It only takes an extra week at the most and you look great if you catch a problem on the front end. If you are sending an order to a workroom or furniture manufacturer, ALWAYS send a fabric sample with your order. Fabric vendors work out of large warehouses and sometimes the person pulling the order doesn’t pay close enough attention to what they are doing and pulls the fabric from the bin next to it. If you have a sample of your fabric on your purchase order, the fabricator will know if they have received the wrong fabric and you won’t have a blue sofa when it should have been red. We have plenty of stories about how CFAs have saved many an order.
When you look at a furniture catalogue, you are probably familiar with the terms length, height and depth, but do you know what SH, SD or AH stand for? SH is seat height and is the distance from the floor to the top of the seat cushion. SD is the seat depth and is the distance from the front of the seat cushion to where the back cushion starts. The AH is arm height and is the distance from the floor to the top of the arm. These are all very important when you sell furniture from a catalogue. There are other terms such as arm fronts, inside backs, outside backs, etc. that are important for fabric and trim placements. Several of our furniture vendors have great drawings in the front of their catalogues. Take a look or ask someone to point them out next time you are in the showroom.
On the rare occasions when an item needs to go back to the vendor, there are call tags, RAs or RGAs issued. A call tag is a term used by the vendor for getting UPS or FedEX to come and pick up your item. RA stands for Return Authorization and RGA stands for Return Goods Authorization. These are similar to call tags, but can also include pick-ups from freight carriers. These numbers are placed on the package to insure credit upon return to the vendor.
We use Quickbooks at CDT and we run into a lot of issues with our “Invoices”. I can’t create an Acknowledgement or Confirmation and apply payments, so we just use the Invoice to show the order. I purchased an ACKNOWLEDGED stamp years ago and for those of you who can receive FAXes, you will get this stamp over the word Invoice, so you will know that this is just a confirmation of your order. For those of you that receive only email, you will notice in the subject line the word Acknowledgment. In the body of the email it states that you should not pay from this but it is just for informational purposes. The attachment will still say Invoice though.
For those of you ordering furniture, we always ask which delivery service you would like to use. This is a company that has a dock so that semi trucks can make deliveries and unload the furniture. The delivery service then unpacks the items and examines them for damage. If needed, repairs are made or the vendor or supplier is notified of the damages so a replacement can be ordered. The delivery service then contacts you or your client to set up a delivery. Moving companies can provide this service also. This may be your only choice when shipping to rural areas or small towns. We have heard many designers state that their client’s company has a dock and why can’t they have the furniture delivered there? Well the biggest reason that we strongly discourage this is for the occasions when damage is freight related. If the receiver doesn’t file a freight claim or note damage on the bill of lading, then the designer will be responsible for having the item repaired or replaced.
The final item is the sidemark or tag. This is usually the name you want on your order to denote who it is for. We always put your company name and your client’s name as the sidemark on your order unless otherwise noted. When we have you send COM (Customer’s Own Material or fabric not from that vendor) fabric to one of our furniture vendors, we always ask you to sidemark it with CDT and our purchase order number. Over the years we have found that your COM gets related to our purchase order and your order gets started much sooner when your name or your client’s name aren’t associated with the sidemark or tag.
These are just some of the terms and items related to the design business. Feel free to contact us any time at Chicago Design Team with your design related questions. Hope this helps clarify a few topics for some of you.
