Why Paying Attention to Who Your Interior Design Business Uses As a Freight Carrier Matters

Dec 21

What if you could have fewer damage claims, more accurate freight times, and the ability to speak to an actual person if you needed a status update on your in-transit orders?

As an interior design business owner, you wear a lot of hats - from bookkeeping to marketing, HR to payroll, sales to client relations. Of course, you devote a great deal of energy and focus to the one thing you love doing the most - creating beautifully designed spaces for your clients’ homes.

And, if you’ve worked with me, or have followed me for any amount of time, I know you deliver that beautiful space while also treating your clients to an elevated experience.

So with all that effort, everything in your business runs sooooo smoothly all the time, right???

Of course not. Things are never that easy in business or in life. Often, it is the smallest things, some tiny logistical detail that — if it doesn’t go smoothly — can cause the absolute biggest headaches. When these small details go wrong, it can bring your operations to an absolute halt.

In today’s business market, shipping and delivery can be the absolutely worst potential end-all, bring-you-to-your-knees, everything-comes-to-a-screeching-halt kind of headache. I’m sure you have all experienced this. Client A’s sofa is twelve weeks overdue. Client B’s cabinet was damaged in transit. Client C’s area rug is in Texas, yet their home is in New York, so furniture can’t even be set in place. And dealing with these issues can take an enormous amount of time and energy to resolve. YIKES!!

Yet, choosing a preferred freight carrier is something that most design business owners have never given a moment’s thought to…Why???

Well, in trying to make this process easier for themselves, and to avoid adding another decision and vendor relationship to their plates, designers typically rely on the default - which in this case is the freight carrier chosen by the showroom, vendor, or manufacturer.

While this approach is the easiest, it may be short-sighted, as it takes control away from the business owner. The successes or failures of whatever freight carrier is used have a direct impact on timely project delivery and client satisfaction for each individual designer they service. Their issues become your issues (and can reflect poorly on your client’s perception of your service).

Paying attention to who ships the products and furniture you order for client projects matters to the success of your business. One of the most overlooked costs incurred in selling furniture is the cost for damage in transit. Although the direct cost may be covered by insurance, when items are damaged, lost, or delayed during shipping, there is also the loss of your time to deal with the issue, the damaged relationship with the client, and the potential negative impact to your reputation.

So now you are probably thinking, “Wait, when I order from a showroom, vendor, or manufacturer, they determine the freight company that transports the goods, right?????”

Not necessarily so. You can allow the vendor to determine who will ship the product. But you don’t have to. And, when the carrier choice is made for you (by a manufacturer or vendor), no one has a stake in monitoring the quality of the carrier’s service record.

So, you are easily able to do a bit of research and develop an account with a reputable freight carrier - one who has a superior service record, minimal delays, and very infrequent damage claims. Also, you want your freight carrier to be a company where you can easily reach an actual person when you need the status of items in transit. As with any other service provider you deal with in your business, you should feel a level of familiarity and open communication with a representative of that business.

If you do develop a relationship with a specific freight carrier to manage all of your product shipping and transport of goods, you will simply provide your vendor and showroom representatives with that information when you place your orders, and they will coordinate pick-up arrangements from their facilities with that specific carrier.

Then, if you need any tracking updates or have questions, you can simply contact your carrier directly (because now you have an actual rep you can call who knows you!)

As an example, two such carriers I am familiar with are Ideal Transport and American West (contact brent@idealtransportinc.com or marcus.cary@awest.com). Both companies will pick up goods in the key furniture manufacturing areas of North Carolina and Virginia (where the vast majority of manufacturing for our industry occurs) and will deliver to most states. They have established relationships with hundreds of key furniture, accessory, and rug manufacturers and have been providing dependable furniture delivery for decades.

Now, keep in mind that a furniture freight carrier such as this will pick up the product from a manufacturing facility and will ship to your geographic area. But they will not deliver directly to your client’s residence or job site, for a variety of reasons. I wrote a previous blog about the need for a receiver that will handle receipt from a national freight carrier and manage the local white glove delivery to a client’s home. Read that article here.

Here are a few additional things to consider when choosing a freight carrier (I promise, it’s easy!):

There may be a few freight options available through a particular carrier, so be sure to choose the most cost-effective option for your particular needs.
Always stick with a specialized furniture carrier. At times, it may be tempting to use transport services such as UPS or FedEx, since they can get something delivered within a couple of days. But they are not specifically trained in handling furniture, which means you run a greater risk of damage or mishandling.
Your carrier may also be able to recommend a reputable receiving warehouse as well, since they deal directly with receivers all over their geographic area. This is an invaluable resource if you’re shipping to a client whose project is out of state and you have no idea who to use.

As with all business operations issues, establishing an account with a freight carrier is a process that can be set up ONCE, and then can operate seamlessly without effort moving forward.