Business Hub · Working With the Trade
Should I take subcontract work from other upholsterers?
Yes, and it is one of the most reliable sources of work in the trade, because manufacturers and busy workshops need capacity they cannot justify employing. Two things make it happen: skills they no longer hold in-house, and volume they cannot cope with. The firm that trained me thirty-four years ago now sends me work regularly — their own traditional upholsterers retired and the company moved to modern production, so the old models come to me. Price it as trade work, get the terms in writing, and never let one client become most of your turnover.
A relationship thirty-four years old
The firm that taught me to upholster still sends me work.
I left them a long time ago. My workshop is now five minutes from their factory, and over three decades I kept in contact — not as a strategy, just as the ordinary business of knowing people in a trade you have both stayed in. That contact is the single most valuable commercial asset I have, and it cost nothing but not letting it lapse.
If you trained somewhere, or worked somewhere, that relationship is worth more than any prospect list. Most people let it go the week they leave.
The two reasons work gets subcontracted
Understanding which one you are being called for changes how you price it and how secure it is.
1. A skill they no longer have
Over the years that company moved away from traditional work towards modern sofas and kitchen booths. That is where the volume and the margin is now, and it is a perfectly sensible commercial decision.
But they still have decades of old traditional models out in the world, and those pieces still come back for reupholstery. The upholsterers who used to build them have retired.
So the work comes to me, because I can still do it and they no longer have anyone who can.
2. More work than they can cope with
The second stream is capacity. When the order book runs ahead of the factory, they send out new builds — armchairs, wing chairs, hotel chairs — and I make them.
That one is less predictable but comes in useful bursts, and it fills exactly the gaps that domestic work leaves.
The pattern worth understanding
There is something happening across the whole trade in that first reason, and it is worth seeing clearly because it is a durable opportunity rather than a lucky arrangement.
Manufacturers modernise. Production moves to foam, frames get simpler, output goes up. The people who knew the old methods reach retirement and are not replaced, because the company no longer builds anything that needs those skills.
But the old furniture does not disappear. It is in houses, hotels and clubs, and it comes back for recovering decade after decade. The demand for traditional skills does not retire when the craftsmen do.
That gap — old products still in service, nobody in-house who can work on them — is a permanent niche for a workshop that has kept the skills. It is also getting wider every year, which is why traditional training matters commercially and not only sentimentally.
Why it makes sense for them
Put yourself on their side of it for a moment, because understanding this is how you argue your price.
Training someone new in traditional methods takes years and there may not be enough of that work to justify a full-time person. Employing somebody for peak periods means paying them in the quiet ones. An outside specialist costs nothing at all when there is no work, carries their own insurance and premises, and can be called on the week they are needed.
You are not the expensive option. You are the one that lets them avoid a fixed cost.
Pricing subcontract work
Subcontract work is trade work, and a trade rate is legitimate — but only for the right reasons.
The genuine savings you pass on are these: no customer to find, no quote to prepare, no fabric books to post out, no meeting where somebody deliberates between three greens, no collection and delivery, and no chasing payment because a business pays on terms.
That is a real reduction in your cost of doing the job, and discounting for it is honest. Work out the job on the cost estimator as you normally would, then take out the parts you genuinely are not doing.
What is not legitimate is a rate that only works if you never stop. The hours are still the hours. A trade discount comes off the selling costs, not off the bench time.
A subcontract rate that would lose money on a slow month is not a discount. It is a subsidy, and you are the one paying it.
The risk nobody mentions
Subcontract work is excellent as a gap-filler and dangerous as a main income.
If one client becomes most of your turnover, you are not self-employed any more. You are an employee without the holiday pay, the notice period or the security — and the day they bring the work back in-house, restructure, or simply have a quiet year, your business goes with theirs.
Watch the percentage. There is no magic number, but when one client passes about a third of your income it is worth actively building something else, not because the relationship is bad but because concentration is a risk regardless of how good the client is.
What to agree in writing
None of this needs a solicitor. It needs an email that both of you can find later.
- Who supplies materials, and who pays for them
- What happens if something is wrong — who remakes it, and at whose cost
- Payment terms, and stick to them. Trade clients paying at sixty days will hurt more than a domestic customer ever does
- Transport — who collects, who delivers
- Whether you may approach their customers. The answer is no, and saying so plainly protects the relationship
- Whose name goes on it. Usually theirs. Be at peace with that before you start.
That last point catches people. Subcontract work is invisible. You will build things you are proud of and never be able to claim them. If being credited matters to you, this is not the work for you.
The other side: handing work out
Eventually you will be too busy, and the question reverses.
The case for it is obvious — a customer served is a customer kept, and turning work away sends people to a competitor who may keep them. But there are three things worth knowing before you do it.
Your name is on it, whatever the arrangement. The customer believes they are dealing with you. If the work comes back poor, it is your reputation, not the subcontractor's. Only send work to someone whose finishing you have actually seen.
You may be handing over the relationship. A good subcontractor who meets your customer becomes an option for that customer next time. Either accept that, or keep the customer contact with you: you collect, you deliver, you invoice.
Get the terms in writing, in both directions. The same list above, from the other side. Especially who fixes it if it is wrong.
And one that comes up more often than you would expect: do not become a conduit between two parties who ought to be talking to each other. If you find yourself passing messages, prices or complaints between a customer and a subcontractor, or between two firms who have their own history, step out and let them deal directly. You carry all of the risk in that position and none of the margin.
The honest summary
Subcontract work will not make you famous and it will not fill your portfolio. It does not need advertising, it does not need quoting, and it arrives without you looking for it.
For me it came from staying in touch with the people who trained me, being five minutes down the road, and still being able to do the work their own retirements took with them.
Two of those three were luck. The third was a choice I made thirty-four years ago and kept making.
Tools for this
Do you work at the bench? The State of the Upholstery Trade survey collects rates, bench hours and lead times from working upholsterers worldwide, so the next person setting a price has something better than guesswork. Anonymous, about three minutes. Add your workshop.