How do I price variants (species + finish + fabric combinations)?
Treat each combination as its own line with its own bill of materials. The base structure stays — same drawing, same joinery, same hardware — but the species swap changes slab cost, the finish swap changes labour and material, and the fabric swap changes upholstery hours and supply. In Slabr each variant carries its own BOM, its own loaded labour, and its own margin check; the client sees three priced options in the portal rather than one weighted-average number. Single-line variant pricing is the most common margin leak in bespoke furniture and the easiest one to fix at the quote stage.
Glossary: variance→
What is typical labour hours per m² for hand-rubbed oil vs lacquer?
These figures are illustrative — actual hours depend on substrate prep, grain raise cycles, climate and operator. As a planning starting point: hand-rubbed hardwax-oil systems commonly run 0.6–1.0 hours per m² across two to three coats including denib. Sprayed nitrocellulose lacquer typically lands at 0.25–0.40 hours per m² across three to four coats once the booth is set up. Conversion varnish and 2K polyurethane add cure windows that occupy booth time even when no operator is present. Track your own actual hours for three jobs per system and replace these defaults with your real rate.
Glossary: wastage percentage→
How do I handle hardwood supply lead-time risk?
Quote the delivery date against confirmed merchant availability, not against catalogue stock. Air-dried European oak in wide stock and bookmatched figured slabs commonly carry 8–14 week lead times — and merchants release them to whoever pays first. The practical pattern: confirm the slab is reserved before quoting the delivery week, and attach a deposit-triggered material order so the slab leaves the merchant's rack the moment the client commits. Slabr's catalogue tracks supplier lead time per material, and the quote flags any component whose lead time exceeds the proposed delivery date.
Glossary: lead time→
What wastage % should I use for figured timber vs straight-grain?
Treat them as separate material types in the catalogue. Straight-grain boards in commodity species (white oak, ash, beech) typically run 12–18% wastage on rip-and-edge work. Figured timber — fiddleback maple, rippled sapele, bookmatched walnut, burr veneers — commonly runs 22–35% because grain match, knot avoidance, and bookmatch alignment force you to discard material that would otherwise yield. Woodweb practitioner threads consistently report this split. Set the wastage factor at the species level, not at the job level, and replace the defaults with your own three-month tracked actuals.
Glossary: wastage percentage→
How do I track veneer offcuts that can be reused?
Log only what is reusable. A 1.2 m leaf of bookmatched walnut in a species you work with monthly is worth logging; a 90 mm trim end is not. Veneer offcuts need more metadata than solid timber: species, leaf number, grain direction, sequence (so you can reassemble a bookmatch later), and face dimensions. Slabr's Inventory module records species, thickness, width and length, with a sequence field so leaves from the same flitch stay grouped. The next quote can pick up the offcut at proper cost and the originating job stops absorbing the residual silently.
Glossary: offcut→
What is a healthy gross margin for bespoke furniture?
Highly geography- and positioning-dependent, so any single number is illustrative rather than benchmark. Procore's COGS primer and Pro Builder's margin tables show custom-build trades commonly target 35–50% gross margin, with bespoke studios at the upper end because the design and finish premium does not scale with material cost. The number that matters is whether the closeout snapshot matches the quoted margin — a 40% quoted commission that closes at 24% is the leak, not the headline target. Tracking quoted vs. actual per piece is what makes next year's pricing honest.
Glossary: closeout snapshot→
