I sell vintage furniture on Chairish. Started taking custom restoration requests last month. Anything from reupholstery to fixing water damage. Not sure if this is the right move or if I'm just asking to deal with nightmare clients. Anyone else tried adding custom work to their Chairish shop?
Furniture Restoration
My Chairish business now takes custom restoration projects
Custom work is a whole different animal. You're basically running two businesses now. The sourcing/selling side and the service side. Good luck.
What's your turnaround looking like? That's what killed me with custom orders. People want it next week but don't want to pay rush fees.
i mean if the money is there why not. but chairish customers can be picky as hell already, i cant imagine giving them more ways to complain lol
Be careful with the quotes. I'd do a non-refundable deposit for materials and a detailed contract with photo approval at each stage. Learned the hard way when someone changed their mind on a whole sofa fabric after I'd already ordered and cut it.
Second the deposit thing. Also don't let them supply their own fabric. The one time I let a client do that, it was some discount stuff that frayed on the frame and somehow that was my fault.
The fabric point is a good one. I haven't taken any client-supplied materials yet but I can see that getting messy.
curious what your rates are. I've been doing this for local clients for years but never tried listing it on a platform like Chairish. Are you charging by the hour or flat per project?
Flat per project with a clearly defined scope. Hourly opens a debate about what counts as work. Flat means I have to estimate well, but it kills 90% of the arguments.
Restoration for customers is just babysitting adults with power tools. They think they want a full heirloom quality refinish for a rusty yard sale find. No.
Managing expectations is the entire job. The actual woodworking is the easy part.
How are you even advertising the custom work on Chairish? I thought their listings were mostly fixed inventory. Do you link to a separate page or just mention it in your shop bio?
For now I've just been putting a note in my shop bio and mentioning it when buyers message about a piece that needs work. Chairish doesn't have a dedicated service listing category as far as I can tell. It's clunky but it's working so far.
Clunky and working is basically the Chairish motto honestly.