Ordering
Your ordered your sofa! Huzzah! Now the fun begins. We promise to make you the furniture of your dreams. Our goal is to get into you in about 10 weeks. We start by creating an individual work order and diagram, customizing the shop drawing of the style you chose, and collaborating with the factory on any questions they have about the order.
Fabric and Leather
Next, we order the fabric and leather, because frame production commences only once the fabric or leather arrives at the factory. The fabrics start out at a mill, where the exact yardage needed to upholster your furniture is cut off the roll, labeled with your order number, and shipped to the factory. We order whole hides of leather, which are rolled to prevent creases and shipped in a huge rectangular box. Fabric and leather typically arrive at our Los Angeles factory in about 10 to 14 business days. We are also happy to work with what the industry calls Customer Own Material (COM). This just means you provide the fabric and we ship it down to the factory for you.
Bench Made Production
After the fabric arrives, production begins in the frame shop, where skilled woodworkers turn lumber into the frame (AKA your furniture's "skeleton"). The best part about buying furniture at Perch is that we make exactly what you want. Every frame is built with a kiln dried hardwood (alder, maple or beech). The joints are corner blocked, the frame is glued, and you can choose if you want the joints industrial stapled, screwed, or double doweled. Our standard suspension is sinuous springs, but we also use uni-directional webbing or 8-way-hand-tied springs.
Upholstery
Next up is the upholstery process. Upholstering starts with the cutter, who first inspects the fabric or leather. Then the cutter hand cuts each piece of fabric or leather needed for the frame and cushions. The material then moves onto the sewing group to create the cushions. Meanwhile, the finished hardwood frame is padded with foam and upholstered. The crew finishes up with all the detail work, including installing bases, attaching legs, hammering in nail heads, and stuffing the cushions.
Inspection
Once complete, each sofa moves on to inspection. All the furniture’s details are checked against the original order and photographs are taken as confirmation. Each piece is personally reviewed by our owner and production manager, Willi. Approved sofas are then carefully wrapped for shipping up the coast to Portland, or directly to locations nationwide.
Shipping
We’ll let you in on a little secret. We are not a big box store. Shocking, right? Unfortunately, we don’t own a shipping company (yet). Since we are a little shop in a big box world, our shipping options are sometimes slow. But! Sometimes they are fast. To be on the safe side, we allow two weeks for shipping to the Portland Metro area.
Delivery
The first 300 sofas made by Perch were hand delivered by co-owner, Jonathan. Every experience was memorable and really drove home who we design for. We also learned the incredible impact of having a fantastic delivery experience. As our business grew, we made the choice of hiring a delivery partner, and the team at Too Big For My Car are an amazing match. Not only do they offer evening and 7 day a week delivery, they provide e-mail or text updates on the day of delivery. And, for the truly interested, downloading their app will let you track the truck as it navigates the city en route to your door. Jonathan is, of course, still available by special request.
After Delivery
Surprised to see this section? We know. Some furniture companies set expectations so low that you feel like getting an auto generated e-mail qualifies as good customer service. Well...we’re better than that. And we always love to hear from you. Sometimes you want to know if there is a “right” way to clean your sofa. Maybe your dog ate your cushion and you want to know if we can get you more fabric to repair it with (yes, this has actually happened). We are always happy to help a customer! Plus, we love to follow up because nothing makes our day like seeing see photos of happy customers enjoying their new sofas.
Haven't ordered yet? Stop by the shop or get in touch! We would love to collaborate with you.