Import duty, conformity, lead times and wholesale models. Written for distributors, retailers and interior professionals, with the figures checked rather than rounded.
Five percent duty, five percent VAT, no furniture specific certification and a port fifteen days from the factory. Why the Emirates are the easiest furniture market to enter in the region.
Saudi Arabia is the richer Gulf market and the heavier one to enter. The cost of entry is not the duty, it is the conformity paperwork on upholstered goods.
The compressed sofa is not a gimmick, it is a logistics decision that shows up in your storage cost, your delivery cost and your refusal rate at the customer's door.
Fifteen to twenty days to Jebel Ali, twenty to twenty eight to Dammam, about fifty to Europe. The distances that decide how a furniture programme should be built.
A brand that discounts online while asking a store to hold full price is not building a network, it is renting one until the first promotion.
The three models differ on one axis that decides everything else: who carries the stock, and therefore who carries the risk and the cash.
Between 200 and 485 pieces depending on the format, and 230 to 300 on a mixed load. Here are the figures per reference, the method to work them out yourself, and why the answer decides your landed cost.
Every buyer asks what a sofa weighs. On sea freight it barely matters: chargeable volume is four to six times the real weight. Here is the number to ask for, and what the gap between net and gross weight hides.
Five tiers, roughly eight to ten percent between each, thirty percent between a single unit and a full container. And the same ratios across every reference, to the thousandth. What that changes about how you negotiate.
Customs duty on upholstered seats entering the UK is zero percent, checked on the official tariff. The obstacle is elsewhere: the UK fire regulations are the strictest in the world, and as importer you are the one who has to prove compliance.
Customs duty on a sofa shipped from China into the European Union is zero percent. It is not the line to watch. Here is the one that actually decides your landed cost.
A price list tells you almost nothing about a supplier. These questions sort, in one exchange, those who have already shipped from those who will learn on your order.
