Furniture importing glossary — the terms, in plain English

Ordering & terms of trade

MOQ

Minimum order quantity: the smallest quantity a supplier will produce per SKU. Driven by fabric cutting runs and production setup, not by arbitrary negotiation. Furniture MOQs typically run 50–200 pieces per SKU — ours start at 50. How small orders work →

FOB

Free On Board (Incoterms 2020): supplier handles export clearance and loading at the origin port; buyer pays ocean freight, insurance, duty and inland delivery. The default for container furniture imports — you keep freight transparency and VAT recovery.

CIF

Cost, Insurance and Freight: supplier pays freight and insurance to your port, you clear import. Convenient, but freight is typically marked up 10–20% inside the price and you stop benchmarking rates.

DDP

Delivered Duty Paid: supplier handles everything including duty and delivery. On containers this usually makes the supplier importer of record — import VAT not recoverable in your name, customs declaration and compliance file invisible to you. FOB vs DDP in full →

EXW

Ex Works: you take goods at the factory gate and handle export clearance, haulage, freight and import. Only sensible with a trusted forwarder at origin.

T/T 30/70

Standard payment: 30% deposit by bank transfer to start production, 70% after a passed pre-shipment inspection. Never pay the balance before an inspection report exists.

Dye lot

The fabric batch from one dye run. Same colour, different lot = slightly different shade. Repeat orders without a held batch reference arrive a shade off and the range stops matching.

FF&E

Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment — the line-by-line schedule of loose furniture in a hotel or restaurant project. How contract programmes run →

HS codes & duty

HS 9401 71

Upholstered seats with metal frames: dining chairs, bar stools, sofas on steel. 0% EU MFN duty, and wood-free construction keeps it outside EUDR. The code our two product lines mostly live in. Duty table →

HS 9403

Other furniture — metal and wooden tables, shelving, cases. Metal furniture (9403 10/20/30) at 0% EU duty; wooden furniture (9403 40–89) at 0% but in EUDR scope.

HS 4412

Plywood panels — not finished furniture. Flat-packed consignments declared as panels can be assessed here, where anti-dumping duties reach ~62.4%. The flat-pack trap. Both traps explained →

EORI

Economic Operators Registration and Identification — required for any business importing into the EU. Free, issued by Germany's Generalzolldirektion within a few working days.

Article 23 deferment

Dutch VAT provision: import VAT is declared in the periodic return without paying at the border — clearance is cash-neutral. Why Rotterdam is the standard gateway for Germany-bound furniture.

Compliance

EUDR

EU Deforestation Regulation, applying from 30 December 2026. Wood and wood-derived products need a due diligence statement before EU market placement. No wood in the product = entirely out of scope. The 12-document checklist →

Due diligence statement (DDS)

The EUDR filing: species identification, country and region of harvest, plot-level geolocation (6+ decimals, polygons above 4 ha), legality proof, deforestation-free evidence against the 31 Dec 2020 cut-off.

Lacey Act

US law requiring a plant-species declaration for wood products including furniture. Wood-free furniture is outside scope.

TSCA Title VI

US formaldehyde limits for composite wood. All-foam and metal furniture without wood panels is outside scope.

GPSR

EU General Product Safety Regulation: requires an EU-established responsible economic operator with technical documentation available on request.

EN 1021-1/-2

European fire test for upholstered furniture — cigarette (part 1) and match flame (part 2). The baseline most EU hospitality specifications cite. Available on our contract builds.

UK 1988 / BS 5852 crib 5

UK fire regulations for furniture in non-domestic premises; crib 5 is the higher match-flame test hotels specify. Each level changes foam chemistry and adds roughly 6–14% to FOB.

ISPM 15

International treatment standard for wood packaging (heat treatment or fumigation, with official stamps). Missing marks are the most common reason containers get held at the port.

Quality

AQL 2.5

Acceptable Quality Limit (ISO 2859-1): the standard third-party pre-shipment inspection level for furniture. Random carton sampling, defects counted against the plan. Roughly $250–400 per man-day — about 1% of a container order.

PP sample

Pre-production sample, built from actual production materials before the run starts. Approve it, and production is checked against it.

Golden sample

The approved sample physically retained at the factory after sign-off. Every future run is measured against it — which is why "as approved" stops being an argument.

Martindale

Upholstery abrasion rating in rub cycles. Domestic use 15,000–25,000; contract furniture 40,000–50,000.

Logistics

20GP / 40HQ

Container types. 20GP ≈ 28 usable cubic metres; 40HQ ≈ 65–68. A 40HQ holds roughly 700–1,100 upholstered dining chairs, or 90–123 roll-packed three-seat sofas. The loading math →

CBM

Cubic metres — the volume unit for cartons and containers. Units per container = usable CBM ÷ (carton CBM ÷ packing efficiency).

Roll-pack

Compression and vacuum-rolling of foam furniture before boxing: 55–60% less shipped volume. Safe only for high-resilience foam with a verified rebound test. How we test it →

72-hour rebound test

A compressed foam batch is released and recovery height recorded after 72 hours. High-resilience moulded foam (32–45 kg/m³) recovers to nominal dimensions; low-density foam recovers soft and stays soft. No rebound figure on file = batch doesn't ship.