Home goods is the category where ASEAN is strongest and where buyers most often get burned — because "furniture" covers a dozen unrelated industries that rarely sit in the same factory.
Where each sub-category actually sits
- Solid wood and rattan: Vietnam and Indonesia. Deep craft base, legal timber documentation (FLEGT/SVLK) already familiar to exporters.
- Metal frame and flat-pack: Thailand and Vietnam. Tube bending, powder coat, knock-down fittings.
- Upholstery: Vietnam, with foam and fabric supply chains close enough to keep lead time predictable.
- Ceramics, glass and tabletop: Thailand and Indonesia.
- Textile home goods (cushions, throws, bedding): Thailand and Vietnam.
A single "home collection" almost always means three or four factories. That is normal; it becomes a problem only when nobody owns the matching between them.
MOQ and lead time reality
Wood and rattan run on labour and drying capacity, so MOQ is usually expressed per model, not per container — often 100–300 pieces. Metal is tooling-led: once jigs exist, repeat runs are cheap. Upholstery MOQ follows fabric minimums, which is why fabric selection drives cost more than frame design.
Plan 90–120 days for a first production run including sampling, and 45–60 days for repeats. Peak season (Aug–Oct for Q4 retail) tightens everything.
Moisture content: the single most common failure
Furniture returned for cracking or joint failure almost always traces to kiln-dried moisture content that was right at the factory and wrong at destination. Specify a target range for the destination climate (typically 8–10% for heated European and North American interiors), require a meter reading per lot, and hold retention samples.
Legality documentation
Timber legality is not optional for EU or US buyers. Indonesian exporters work under SVLK; Vietnamese exporters maintain chain-of-custody records. Ask for the documents before the first order, not when customs asks.
What TUSKO does on this category
We qualify each factory on its own terms, hold one specification set across the collection, run pre-shipment inspection against the approved sample, and consolidate mixed categories into one container so a collection arrives complete rather than in four partial deliveries.