How to make money making cheap furniture

Business concept

Furniture market experts believe that manufacturing cabinet furnishings is the most cost-effective. Furniture blocks are made from wood, metal, chipboard, plastic, glass. This allows for maximum market coverage.

The most profitable option is to choose chipboard as the basis for furniture. The cost of wood is high. It is more suitable for design projects.

Furniture made from chipboard is not only economically profitable, but also beautiful.

If you decide to open a furniture factory, focus on large clients. Organizations and business centers can act as customers. Or negotiate the supply of finished furniture to large retail enterprises. For small businesses, the target audience is design studios, or people who want to make an individual order of unusual furniture through the website.

Where to start a furniture business?

Even before the actual organization, it is necessary to decide on the positioning and the main approach to this matter. At the moment, there are 2 main approaches to organizing a furniture business. These approaches have fundamental differences, both in terms of investment and in terms of implementation complexity. The first option involves assembling furniture from ready-made components and practically does not require serious investment. The second option involves opening your own full-cycle furniture workshop, which will produce components and directly assemble furniture from them.

Despite the theoretical complexity of implementing a business model of the second type, if you have certain specialized skills and free space for furniture production, even the second option can be implemented with minimal investment.

Opening a furniture assembly business does not require any significant investment at all. At the initial stage, you will need a computer, a printer, a conventional drill and a small set of hand tools for woodworking and furniture assembly. You will also need to understand the process and specifics of furniture assembly. You can gain skills and become familiar with the assembly process by watching free promising lessons or reading specialized books, which are presented in huge quantities in open sources.

You can assemble modern furniture, and even premium furniture, which is presented in the best furniture showrooms, on your own, with a minimal understanding of the technical process and a basic set of tools.

The attractiveness of the furniture business for a potential start-up entrepreneur lies in the possibility of organizing production with minimal investment, as well as relatively high profitability, which is at the level of 50-60%.

Moreover, it is possible to organize a business without any investment. At the first stage, the money will be invested by the clients themselves, to whom you will be able to competently present yourself and bring them to order furniture.

What will be required for implementation?

The workshop space can be rented at first. It won’t cost a pretty penny, since there are no special requirements for it. The workshop can be located anywhere; it is more profitable to set up production in the industrial zone of the city - the rent will be less. For a small enterprise, an area of ​​40 square meters is enough to accommodate a production workshop and warehouse.

Those who have start-up capital allow them to immediately open an exhibition salon with an office. To do this, you need to rent a hall in the city center with high traffic. But this is only profitable for large populated areas. In small villages, it is profitable to open only a workshop: make furniture to order or sell it through the website.

As for equipment, everything depends on production volumes. A large factory has band saws, dryers, milling machines, sandblasting machines, as well as machines for engraving and polishing metal. For small production you will need:

• format cutting machine;
• grinder;
• equipment for edge finishing.

Each craftsman needs his own set of hand tools (screwdrivers, hammers, drills, etc.).

To save money, purchase equipment second-hand: it’s half the price of new equipment. But you need to have a good understanding of technology so as not to spend money on decommissioned machines.

The downside of used equipment is the lack of warranty service.

You will also need a powerful computer on which you need to install programs for cutting parts (for example, ASTRA or Cutting). The staff includes four foremen, a manager for taking orders and a driver with a truck. Outsource the costs of accounting and design: the help of remote specialists is cheaper than including them on staff.

Conducting a powerful advertising campaign is necessary if you are opening a large enterprise. Then you will have to involve the media, order banners and leaflets, and conduct advertising campaigns. For a small production, it is enough to create a website with photographs of samples, prices and contact information.

How much can you earn from restoring furniture?

Before you publish a price list for your work, think carefully about the prices for your services. Because here it is very important not to scare away clients, but, on the contrary, to entice them with an interesting prospect, not only to look at their things after the transformation, but by the fact that they will pay a relatively small amount of money for it. It is clear that with everything you should not forget about your benefits, since the price should fully compensate for your expenses, work and time spent.

In this matter, you can focus on the prices stated for new furniture of similar quality. Since from a psychological point of view of buyers, customers, as a rule, do not mind paying 30% of the cost of a new chair or table to update the old one. But if your price tag for repairs exceeds 50-60%, then in most cases, potential clients will still buy new furniture, even of slightly worse quality than the old one, rather than turn to you for help.

DIY furniture restoration

So, we present preliminary calculations of prices for services for reupholstering or restoration of old or antique furniture. It must be said that the data presented here does not include the cost of materials. As a rule, it is this additional amount that is taken in the form of an advance from the client when placing an order. Experienced business people recommend additional services, which can include sewing covers, pillows, replacing fillings and creating a separate price list.

As practice shows, this type of business is highly profitable and also very profitable. Of the initial investments, the main one is the professionalism of the restoration worker, the remaining cost items are relatively small, so the return on investment occurs in the first 5-10 orders. It is best not to dwell on single orders for too long, but to move on to more promising actions. Firstly, take at least two people for training and, secondly, serve entire institutions in the future. For example, cinemas, restaurants, cafes, clubs, offices are constantly in need of repairing upholstered furniture. Therefore, having completed your first large order quickly and efficiently, you will be rewarded with a constant flow of customers.

It is also necessary to provide for a delivery procedure for restoring furniture to the workshop from the customer and back. For this purpose, it is worth reaching appropriate agreements with drivers and loaders, or performing delivery and removal yourself. If we are talking about independent transportation, it is very desirable to have a van or a small truck.

Positive aspects and possible risks

If you invest a large share of your earnings in business development, in a couple of years you can expand a small workshop into a furniture factory. Regular customers will appear, connections with material suppliers will be established, and the site will be promoted. This will lead to higher income levels.

But you need to take into account the possible risks and not forget about the benefits:

The manufacture of cabinet furniture, despite the competition, is a promising direction in business. Furnishings break, wear out and become boring. There will always be clients who want to change the interior. This means that production will not be left without work.

How to start a furniture business from scratch without investment?

Many aspiring entrepreneurs wonder about this. The fact is that investments in this type of business at the initial stages are really very small. However, even this money may not be available. Fortunately, there is a proven and common method. It is worth noting that this is how some furniture entrepreneurs began their activities, who currently have their own full-cycle production, chain stores and well-known brands.

The essence of this method is extremely simple - starting a business with the money of your first clients. If you have had to order custom-made furniture, you may have noticed such a feature of cooperation as making an advance payment. Furniture makers never produce furniture for their own money. Usually, when ordering furniture, you pay 50% of the cost of the furniture, which fully covers the cost of materials.

Often, beginning furniture makers don’t even have their own delivery vehicle. They arrive at a warehouse or store by public transport, place an order, and after a while hire a car to transport the materials to the workshop. In the workshop, the furniture is completely assembled, after which it is disassembled, the furniture “constructor” is delivered to the customer, where the furniture is assembled and full payment for services takes place.

As you can see, the process of organizing a furniture business from scratch is a fairly simple procedure that requires minimal understanding of the field and does not require investment. After you have earned the required amount from individual furniture orders, you can rent equipment, purchase equipment, hire several employees and open your own furniture production workshop.

Selecting a room

There is no point in planning to organize a separate workshop at the start of the project. It’s good if you live in a private house and have a utility room or garage attached to it.

This is what your workshop could look like

Otherwise, it will be difficult to cope with furniture restoration in the conditions of an ordinary city apartment. By default, we assume that your conditions allow you to carry out restoration without renting additional space.

Pros and cons of business

For clients, restoring the appearance of furniture has the following advantages:

1. Reduce costs. Restoring furniture is much cheaper than buying new.
2. Save time. The master himself comes to the place, makes all the necessary calculations, measurements, organizes the removal and return of finished products.
3. Restoring furniture at the client’s home is a convenient and profitable service.
4. Furniture can be carried out according to the sketches of the client, who clearly understands what he wants to see before and after updating the interior.

The following points are important for an entrepreneur:

1. High demand.
2. Wide possibilities for choosing a niche. You can master several areas or declare a narrow specialization, for example, “Restoration of kitchen furniture.”
3. Repairing and reupholstering furniture does not require special education. You can learn everything in a short time.
4. Large amounts of initial investment are not required.

Enterprise profitability

The goal of any business is to make a profit. It is important to consider two points here. The price for services must be decent in order to cover the costs of materials and get a return on the time and effort spent.

However, if the cost of repairs exceeds 30% of the cost of finished furniture, then this will be unprofitable for customers. They will prefer to buy a new product rather than restore old furniture.

The greatest income comes from restoring antique furniture and cooperation with large customers (shops, cafes, hotels). Free delivery of furniture to the workshop and back to the customer is one of the competitive advantages, however, it will require additional costs for hiring movers and a van. In the future, you can purchase your own transport. According to experts, the payback period for the project is about 6 months under conditions of average workload of the workshop.

Purchase of equipment and preparation of premises

The work space is a personal garage, which we will convert into a workshop. To do this you will need very few construction and finishing materials. You also need to make a heating system in the garage or install a powerful heater so that you can work in the cold season and the furniture does not deteriorate while you are in it.

In addition, equipment will be purchased that will be used to repair furniture. In addition, we will need to buy sets of tools with which we will go to the customer.

Detailed cost estimates in the table:

Initially, you can buy a starter kit for restoration, and additional materials and tools can be purchased during the work process, based on the needs and specifics of the repair. Also, in order for the upholstery of upholstered furniture to be of the highest quality, it is necessary to choose the material depending on the needs, expectations and budget of the customer.

In addition, you will need to spend money on paying for electricity in the workshop. On average, the amount will not exceed 5 thousand rubles.

Price-list

Our price list for furniture repair and restoration services:

What documents are needed to organize a furniture restoration business?

To legally operate a workshop that provides furniture restoration services, it is enough to issue individual entrepreneur documents. To do this, you need to make photocopies of your TIN and passport, write an application in the prescribed form, pay the state fee and give these documents to the tax inspector. Also, you need to select the OKVED code that corresponds to your line of commercial activity and decide on the optimal tax regime.

In this case, furniture restoration is included in the group - OKVED 95.24 . No additional permits or licenses are required for the legal operation of the workshop . The only thing you need to remember is to obtain papers from the fire inspectorate and Rospotrebnadzor, which confirm that the workshop premises comply with sanitary standards and fire safety requirements.

Registering a legal entity to operate a furniture restoration workshop is an absolutely irrational decision. You will only waste money and create additional problems for yourself.