August 1, 2021

Lisa Hatcher

Have you experienced long deliveries for furniture? No matter what you have tried to purchase this year you have most likely experienced extended delays. This is especially true for the Interior Design industry.

We have all heard about a foam shortage or delays from COVID if you have tried to purchase anything for your home. I have experienced this first hand when I decided to buy a new sofa earlier this summer. Lead times on upholstered goods have gone from a 4-6 week lead time to upwards of 30 weeks! After a year of most people being on lockdown and at home, people want to update their space. Clearly, I was not the only one that thought of getting a new sofa. So I wanted to understand a little more about what was happening.

With the market flooded with orders and less than normal manufacturing capabilities, things started to slow down. In some cases they stopped altogether. On top of this, extreme cold weather conditions occurred earlier this year in the US. Several Southern states, including Texas and Louisiana, experienced Power outages. This shut down plants that produce the necessary chemicals to make the foam for the furniture everyone was ordering.

Another piece of the puzzle was the lack of metal hardware needed to assemble the furniture. A large majority of the metal is produced in China, and due to COVID China experienced a mass shortage in workers.

Finally, once the product arrives at the ports there is no one available to unload the product. With the shortage of trucks to transport the pieces, it causes the extreme shipping delays we’ve all grown accustomed to.

In a world of “instant” and short attention spans it has been tough to get used to this new normal we are experiencing. Luckily clients have been extremely patient and understanding. It is so interesting to see how intertwined our world has become and that it took a pandemic for most of us to realize it.

We are all in this together.