A few years ago, the rug from our Springbank project (pictured above) was delayed. Very delayed.
The angst surrounding the delays in receiving this custom rug seem quaint now in the face of the supply chain issues the home design and renovation business is facing. Clients are waiting and waiting (and w.a.i.t.i.n.g…) for items to arrive.
At the time this custom, hand-knotted rug was delayed, there was a strike in Jaipur, India and the weavers had walked off the job. No goods were being completed. No orders were moving through the system and it created a backlog and long delays. That piece of information was slow to percolate through the vendor leaving us with no information about why the expected production and delivery schedule had been abandoned and no timeline could be given.
What is happening right now in the home goods industry is system-wide disruption meeting massive demand meeting raw material shortages. It makes it very difficult to plan and deliver a project. The things you’ve always been able to count on: suppliers who can predict their lead times with confidence, availability of raw materials to make the goods, and trained artisans to shape the products. None of these are available on any kind of reliable or timely schedule.
Add to this a tripling in the costs to secure container space for transportation and the near daily notices of cost increases.
At this point, it is unclear how long it will take to get the systems sorted and working reliably again and so planning well in advance and expecting delays is prudent for any new interior design projects on the horizon.
All of these challenges are magnified by the reality that many of the steps for constructing fine furniture and custom items are linear in nature. You can’t move on to step two until step one is done and if there is a delay in the chain, well, the whole thing bogs down.
The good news is that we have been challenged with thinking outside the box and changing the way we think about projects. We have all learned to change our perspective and stress a little less about the things we can’t control. It also means being actively in control of everything that you can.
We use a proven project management approach to keep the details of a project advancing and visible well into the future. And, as for that custom rug? We laugh at how cute we were thinking it was an issue.
