The Cost, Price & Value of Handmade Bespoke Furniture: Why it's Unlikely You'll Ever Be Overcharged
If you are new to buying handmade furniture you may initially think it’s expensive, certainly when compared to high street and online furniture retailers.
Based on price comparison alone, independently made bespoke furniture is undoubtedly higher. But this only tells a fraction of the story.
This article will examine the cost, price, relative value and absolute value inherent in bespoke furniture. In doing so, it will show why it’s very unlikely you’ll ever get less than you paid for.
(Please note – for the purposes of this article, the terms ‘independent’, ‘handmade’ and ‘bespoke’ will be largely interchangeable. Although different in meaning, here they will refer to furniture produced by hand on a one-off or small batch basis by a single, self-funded maker.)
Cost
The costs involved in independently making handmade bespoke furniture are high.
Creating a beautiful solid wood dining table or striking set of handcrafted dining chairs requires a lot of time and resources. Ask a furniture maker about this and they are sure to rattle off a long list of expenses.
The following summary of costs is not meant to be an apology or justification for high prices. Rather, the aim is to give the potential buyer an insight into what is involved, and in doing so giving them an appreciation of the process and ultimately the finished furniture itself.
Time
The time involved in making handmade furniture is significant and normally represents the biggest cost.
Many buyers of bespoke furniture underestimate how much time is involved. And many buyers of bespoke furniture assume a furniture maker is paying themselves a healthy hourly rate.
However, most furniture makers are drawn to their ‘noble craft’ through a passion, a calling – even a vocation. In the UK at least, most vocations are low paying and a proportion of furniture makers earn little more than the living wage.
Cost of materials
Most people think this is the biggest cost making of bespoke furniture. But as we have outlined above, this is not the case. It can vary quite dramatically but typically the cost of timber may represents between 25-30% of the total price.
Buying and maintaining plant machinery
The sums involved in setting up and maintaining a professional workshop are high. To give just one example, a quality top planer (a machine which simply mills one edge and one face of timber square) can easily cost £10,000.
Added to this is the need for a table saw, radial arm saw, thicknesser, router table and a comprehensive dust extraction system.
Workshop rent
While a few lucky furniture makers own their workshop, most rent.
To put rental costs in some kind of context, in 2021 Lloyds Banking Group reported that the average monthly mortgage payment in the UK was £753.
Depending on size, location and amenities, workshop rental costs often exceed this.
Power and hand tools
Aside from the large commercial machinery required to produce bespoke furniture on a professional basis, there is also a huge array of power tools and hand tools needed.
Drills, routers, sanders, circular saws, hand saws, chisels and hand planes are just a few examples. The list can seem endless and quality tools come at a price.
Utilities
This includes the costs involved in heating and lighting a workshop and running the machinery and tools discussed above.
Other relevant expenses are fuel – considerable at the time of writing (April 2020) – for getting to and from the workshop, client visits and delivering completed commissions.
Consumables
There is often a long list of consumable items involved in making a piece of bespoke furniture - glue, sandpaper, wire wool, white spirit, methylated spirits, finishing oils, waxes, screws and wire wool, to name but a few.
Although some buyers of bespoke furniture will appreciate gaining a deeper understanding of the costs involved – and even sympathise with the challenges facing the independent furniture maker – it is arguably an irrelevance.
People seldom assess a potential purchase based on costs – even if they do have a handle on what these might be. Price is a much more relevant factor.
But what this examination of costs does show is the profit margins involved in handmade bespoke furniture are typically slim. Therefore the potential for clients to be overcharged is low.
Let’s now look at pricing.
Price
Price is clearly an important factor in any purchasing decision. Furniture is no different.
Comparing independently-made handmade furniture to a high street retailer selling factory produced items leads to an obvious conclusion – the former has higher pricing than the latter. But let’s explore this further.
A tale of two tables
As a useful example, let’s take two dining tables of equal dimensions.
One is made by a local cabinet maker – who we’ll call Emma Floyd Fine Furniture – and is priced at £2,400. The other is available to buy in a well-known high street department store, Joan Lewisham & Partners. It costs £1,200.
Quite clearly the handmade dining table is twice the price of the high street version. But this only tells part of the story.
Mark up within the UK retail furniture industry is on average 150%, or 2.5 times. This is because retail costs – display space, rent, staff wages, business rates, advertising and marketing, etc. – have to be absorbed into the price the customer pays.
Let’s assume that Joan Lewisham sources its dining tables at the wholesale price of £500 per unit. In many instances it may even be cheaper than this. But let’s be generous and stick with £500.
We can conclude therefore that £500 went into the making (time, materials and other production costs) of the Joan Lewisham dining table, while £2,400 went into the making of the Emma Floyd dining table.
In effect, in buying the handmade bespoke dining table you are getting nearly five times the relative value for only twice the price.
Incidentally, this comparison also holds true for online furniture retailers – a sector which has seen huge growth over the last 10-20 years.
Although online retailers don’t have the ‘bricks and mortar’ costs of their high street counterparts, they do have long supply chains.
It is not unusual in the 21st century for furniture manufacturing to involve raw materials being shipped halfway across the world to be assembled in regions with low labour costs before being shipped back to distribution hubs for eventual delivery to the customer.
The longer the supply chain, the more links in the chain – and each link demands a share of the final price the customer pays.
A discussion of relative value may, of course, be of little comfort to a buyer who only has a budget of £1,200 for their dining table. But it does demonstrate the enormous value inherent in buying handmade bespoke furniture – particularly when done directly from the maker.
Value
So far, we have looked at the considerable costs involved in producing handmade bespoke furniture and how a significantly higher proportion of the price is invested into its ‘making’ than its high street or online equivalent.
Finally, and perhaps most persuasively, we are going to look at absolute value. More specifically, the perceived value the buyer gets from an independent maker rather than a high street or online retailer.
Tailored to specific requirements
The most obvious benefit of buying bespoke furniture is the facility to commission furniture that meets your specific needs and taste.
Whether it’s using a particular type of wood, obtaining a specific finish or having it fashioned to your exact dimensions and configurations, the choice is almost endless.
Using the finest materials
Most furniture makers work with the finest materials, incorporating premium solid woods and unusual or rare veneers wherever possible
Locally produced
‘Furniture miles’ is a growing problem within the industry. A lot of big brands supply chains stretch across the globe.
A bespoke furniture maker is likely to be producing furniture in the same city, region or country as you. This is much kinder to the planet and more supportive of the local economy.
Sustainability
Bespoke furniture makers care about their materials and where they come from.
The timber used will be FSC certified to ensure the promotion of responsible management of the world’s forests.
In addition, the longevity of handmade, solid wood furniture is far greater than mass-produced equivalents. Furniture will last generations rather than just several years.
(For a more detailed examination of the environmental benefits of handmade furniture, see ‘Fast Furniture: The Shocking Truth and How We Fix It’.)
A direct relationship with the maker
There are very few areas of life where you get the opportunity to meet the person who is making something for you.
Have you met the person or people who built your car, made your shoes or grown the vegetables for tonight’s dinner? Probably not.
This immediate relationship with the maker imbues your furniture with a special, emotional quality than can’t be replicated on the high street or online.
This list is not exhaustive. A fuller discussion of the benefits can be found in the previous articles ‘8 Joys of Bespoke Furniture’ and ‘Wood and Wellbeing - The Biophilic Benefits of Solid Wood Furniture’.
Bespoke bargains
Hopefully by now you will have gained a deeper appreciation of the costs involved in handcrafting bespoke furniture from the finest materials.
You should also have a greater understanding of the comparative pricing between independent furniture makers and their high street and online counterparts, and how bespoke furniture represents such great value for money.
Perhaps most importantly, if you value things such as uniqueness, craftmanship, quality, sustainability and supporting local enterprise, you will be beginning to realise what a great deal handmade bespoke furniture offers.
You may even start viewing it as a bargain.