Custom furniture and wood products: MOQ, tooling, lead time and landed cost
Confidence 4/5 Established practice · review by 2026-12-31
Furniture is the category where freight changes the answer completely. A product that is cheap at the factory can be uneconomic to ship once volume is counted, so the first useful question is not the unit price but the cubic metres per unit. Flat-pack design and knock-down construction exist precisely to fix that ratio, and a good sourcing desk raises it before quoting.
Quick answers
| Minimum order quantity | Roughly 50–200 pieces per model for standard construction; 200–500 where a custom mould, profile or metal frame is involved. |
| Lead time | Sample: 15–25 days. Production: 30–50 days, longer for solid wood with finishing and curing time. |
| Tooling | Often none beyond jigs and fixtures. A custom metal frame or bent component needs its own tool, quoted separately. |
| Unit cost | Roughly USD 40–250 per chair or small table at 100 units, but the number that matters is landed cost per cubic metre, not per unit. A bulky cheap item frequently loses to a slimmer, pricier one. |
| HS classification | Chapter 94 for furniture. Wooden furniture is 9403.3x to 9403.6x, and the subheading depends on the material and the item type. Solid wood has phytosanitary requirements that MDF and plywood generally avoid. |
| Certification | CARB Phase 2 and TSCA Title VI apply to composite wood panels sold in the US and are a real compliance gate, not a formality. EU formaldehyde limits apply under REACH. Fire retardancy rules matter for upholstered goods in some markets. |
| Duty | US Section 301 tariffs applied to many Chinese furniture categories, and rates have moved. Freight is usually a larger share of landed cost than duty in this category. |
Common mistakes
- Quoting per unit and ignoring cubic volume.
- Assuming flat-pack design is free; it needs engineering and hardware, and it changes the product experience.
- Composite wood panels without CARB or TSCA documentation for the US market.
- Solid wood without heat treatment and the associated phytosanitary certificate.
- Not budgeting for the assembly instructions and the hardware kit, both of which are part of the product.
Detailed answers
Sources
- Furniture MOQ, lead time and freight-volume practice — Industry practice; varies widely by material and construction
- Furniture under HS chapter 94 — World Customs Organization HS nomenclature
- Formaldehyde emission standards for composite wood — US EPA TSCA Title VI
- Phytosanitary requirements for wood packaging and solid wood — International Plant Protection Convention ISPM 15
Get custom furniture and wood products quoted
Describe the specification and quantity. A human replies within 24 hours with suppliers and one landed price.