Am I being overcharged for my bespoke furniture?

So, you are interested in buying some bespoke furniture, but after looking at seemingly similar pieces online, you start to wonder, why is custom furniture so expensive? After all, the high street and online furniture retailers can make furniture for less. Am I being overcharged?

Based on price comparison alone, independently made bespoke furniture is undoubtedly higher. But this only tells a fraction of the story. Join us as we uncover the cost, price, and value of going bespoke. It will show you why it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get less than what you pay for when going bespoke.

The Costings involved:

Making bespoke furniture by yourself or with a small team is expensive. It takes a lot of knowledge, effort, experience, time, skills and money to make high-quality furniture to suit a customer's specific style and space. Ask any furniture maker about this. They will undoubtedly point out the countless costs involved.

We have broken down the costs that go into your bespoke furniture below. Some that you may not even think of when the quote is in front of you. With this blog post, we aim to give you, the potential customer, a better understanding of what’s involved. This will help you to appreciate both the manufacturing process and, in the end, the furniture itself.

So, what goes into my bespoke furniture? Well, a lot of things go into the creation of your furniture. Including many years of education and experience, the main factors are - time, the cost of materials, buying/maintaining machinery, workshop rent, utilities, power & hand tools, and consumables.

Time

Making custom furniture takes a lot of time, which usually is the largest cost.

Many customers who purchase bespoke furniture underestimate how much time is commitment to their design, and many people who buy custom furniture assume that the maker is taking home a big wage, but this isn't always the case. Most furniture makers are drawn to their craft because of their passion for woodwork. Professional furniture makers in the UK are low-paid, and some make little more than the national living wage.

Cost of materials

People tend to believe that the materials are the most expensive part of creating bespoke furniture, but this is not the case, as we've mentioned above. Although, it can vary quite a bit depending on your design and requirements. Typically, the cost of the materials can make up between 30 and 40% of the total cost.

Buying and maintaining machinery

Setting up and maintaining a professional workshop costs a lot of money. For instance, a decent quality edgebander (a machine that glues the edging to match your melamine face board onto each raw edge that's visible) of good quality can easily cost anywhere from £10,000 upwards.

On top of that, a panel saw, router table, a hinge drilling machine and an efficient dust extractor system are required depending on the materials used for your design.

Workshop rent

While you will find a few furniture makers who own their workshops, most of us rent.

The average cost to rent workshop space in the West Midlands is roughly £7.50 per sq ft at the time of writing this blog (Oct 2023). Most woodworking workshops require at least 1,500 square feet to function comfortably, meaning the average monthly rent is around £938.50. Remember that this excludes any potential site maintenance fees or business rates. The cost of renting a workshop typically exceeds this, depending on its size, location, and mandatory maintenance fees.

Utilities

Utilities are often an overlooked expense when it comes to seeing the overall quote, even though without them, we'd be unable to heat or light our workshop or run our machinery and tools discussed above to create your furniture. 

Fuel is another important price that must be considered. Currently, at the time of writing this blog (Oct 2023), it is expensive to purchase fuel to travel to and from the workshop, see clients, collect supplies and transport furniture.

Power and hand tools

In addition to the big commercial machinery needed to professionally make your bespoke furniture, a vast assortment of hand and power tools are also required. A few examples of some of the tools used are drills, jigsaws, sanders, circular saws, routers, multi-tools and electrical planers. The list may seem never-ending, and high-quality tools are not cheap.

Consumables 

Behind every piece of bespoke furniture is a long list of consumable items involved in its creations -  blades, sandpaper, glue, waxes,  nails and screws of many different varieties are needed, to mention a few. 

Although some. of our customers may value learning more about the associated costs and even sympathise with the difficulties that can arise, it is unfortunately irrelevant. 

Even when the potential customer is shown their dream design, they rarely evaluate the quote based on the list above. Price is by far the most important thing to consider.

This cost analysis does, however, demonstrate that the profit margins associated with handcrafted bespoke furniture are often small. Therefore, there is little chance that customers will be overcharged.

Now, let’s move on to pricing… 

Obviously, costs influence your every purchasing decision. It's not like you have an unlimited supply of money when it comes to your home. It's clear from comparisons that independently produced, bespoke furniture will cost more than similarly sized products sold on the local high street, or with online retailers who use factory production, but why is this? Let's find out.

Highstreet vs Bespoke

Imagine finding the home of your dreams. You move in and begin to focus on renovating. Whilst unpacking, you quickly figure out that your bedroom has a lot of unused space. You decide to look online to find some fitted wardrobes with a dressing table. You uncover two possibilities after searching online.

Option One -  Created by one of your favourite high street brands, for the lovers of Scandinavian design, coming in at the bargain price of £1,500.

Option Two - Crafted by your local cabinet makers - let’s call them Beautifully Bespoke -  and is priced at  £3,500. 

You can see that the cost of the bespoke alternative is twice as much as the high street brand, but have you stopped to think why? 

Let's start by examining the typical markup in the UK within the furniture retail sector. It's often around 2.5 times, or 150% more than what wholesalers pay. This is because retail costs, like display space,  rent, wages for employees, business rates, marketing and advertising, etc., need to be covered somehow, which is why they are absorbed into the price that the customer pays. 

Suppose this high street retailer purchases their wardrobes at a wholesale cost of £500 per piece. In many cases, it might even be less expensive than this. But let's be fair and keep the amount at £500. 

Therefore, we can conclude that the high-street wardrobes cost £500 to make (in terms of labour, materials, and other production costs), whereas the full £3,500 went into the crafting of the Beautifully Bespoke wardrobes.

By purchasing custom wardrobes, you effectively receive roughly six times the proportional value for only two times the cost. 

In addition, this comparison also applies to online furniture shops, a market that has experienced tremendous expansion over the past 10 to 20 years. Despite not having the same "bricks and mortar" expenses as their high street competitors, internet businesses still have extensive supply chains.

In the twenty-first century, it is not uncommon for raw materials to be flown halfway around the world for furniture manufacturing, to then be assembled in nations with low labour costs, before being shipped back to distribution centres for it's final journey to the buyer. 

The more connections involved in the supply chain, the more companies are involved, and they all demand a share of the final price that the customer pays. 

This may not help someone who only has a budget of £1,500 for their wardrobes however, it does highlight the tremendous value that comes with purchasing handcrafted, bespoke furniture, especially when done so directly from the maker.

Last but not least, the value 

So far, we've looked at the high costs involved in creating bespoke furniture, and how much more of the price goes into making it compared to a high-street or internet manufacturer. 

We'll look at absolute value last, which will likely make the strongest argument. Specifically, the perceived value the customer receives from an independent furniture maker as opposed to a high-street or internet merchant.

Tailored to specific requirements

The most obvious benefit of buying bespoke furniture is the ability to work one-on-one with a craftsman to create furniture that suits your specific measurements, style and needs.

The options are virtually limitless, from choosing a specific material to having something created to fit in your home exactly. Your wildest furniture dreams are almost endless. 

Using the finest materials

The majority of furniture makers use only the highest-quality materials and components, such as Blum drawer runners and Moisture Resistant MDF. You can see the quality everywhere you look. 

Locally produced

Within the industry, "furniture miles" are a growing concern. Supply chains for many major brands span the entire world. Most likely, a bespoke furniture maker is working in the same city, region, or country as you. This is better for the environment and helps to support the local economy.

Sustainability

Bespoke furniture manufacturers take pride in their work. They care about the materials that they use, and where they come from. To support the promotion of ethical forest management around the world, the lumber they use will be FSC-certified.

Additionally, bespoke furniture crafted with high-quality materials has a much longer lifespan than comparable items mass-produced in factories. Instead of being replaced every few years, furniture will last a lifetime. 

A direct relationship with the maker

There aren't many situations in life where you can meet the person who is crafting something, especially for you. 

 Have you ever had the chance to meet the individual(s) who built your car, made your shoes, or grew your vegetables for your evening meal? Probably not.

This direct connection to the cabinet maker gives your furniture a unique, sentimental quality that cannot be matched on the high street or online.

Hopefully, by now, you have a deeper appreciation of how much it costs to manufacture bespoke furniture from quality materials. Maybe this has helped you to see how independent furniture makers' prices compare to those of their high-street and online counterparts and how bespoke furniture gives such great value for money. 

Perhaps most importantly, you will appreciate how much bespoke furniture offers if you value characteristics like originality, craftsmanship, quality, sustainability, and supporting local business.

Methodology:

Workshop rent average cost per sqm sourced from Zoopla based on a ground floor workshop unit with strip LED lighting, 3-phase power supply, a working height of 3+ meters and manual roller shutter doors.

Typical furniture retail markup figures are pulled from the Gross Margin Return on Inventory (GMROI) chart available on the retail owner institute.

Retail markup figures can also be found on Magestore but are not based solely on UK data.