Behind the scenes ·
What to look for when you visit a sofa workshop
Twenty minutes on a workshop floor will tell you more than any showroom ever will. Here is exactly what to look at.
Go on a working morning, unannounced if you can
A workshop on a Tuesday morning tells the truth. There will be dust, there will be noise, there will be half-built frames on trestles, and that is exactly what you want to see. A visit arranged for a specific hour on a Saturday, in a swept space with nothing in progress, tells you nothing at all.
We take visitors any working morning without an appointment. So do most honest workshops in the valley. A maker who cannot show you work in progress is usually not making it.
One: look at the timber rack
Before you look at any sofa, find where the wood is stored. You are looking for timber stacked with spacers between the layers so air moves through it, and you are looking for a reasonable quantity of it — evidence that wood sits here for months before it is used.
Ask how long the timber has been seasoning. The answer should be in months or years. If the answer is that it arrives and goes straight to the saw, the frames will move in their first monsoon regardless of how good the joinery is.
Two: find a bare frame and push it
There should be frames waiting to be upholstered. Ask to push one. Put your weight on one front corner and watch the diagonally opposite corner. A well-joined frame moves as one solid object. A poorly joined one racks visibly, like a garden gate, and you will hear it.
Look at the corners while you are there. Mortise-and-tenon joints, corner blocks, glue and pins or bolts. Staples are fine for holding fabric and are not a joint.
Three: ask for a foam offcut
There will be foam offcuts on the floor. Pick up two of different grades and squeeze them side by side. You will feel the difference between 24 and 40 density immediately, and once you have felt it you will never be confused by a showroom claim again.
Ask which grade is going into your seat and which into your support layer. Two numbers, not one. Then ask to keep a small piece — a workshop that hands it over is a workshop with nothing to hide.
Four: watch someone stitch
Stand behind a machine for two minutes. Watch whether the operator is following a chalked line, whether the seam allowance stays constant, and whether panels are being matched or simply joined. Then go and look at a finished sofa and follow one seam with your finger from one end to the other. It should not wander.
Five: talk to a karigar, not just the owner
This is the part most visitors skip and it is the most revealing. Ask a craftsman on the floor how long he has worked there and what he is building. In a workshop where people stay for years and know exactly what they are doing, you will get an easy, specific answer and often a small tour of the piece in front of him.
High turnover shows immediately, because nobody can tell you about the work. And the sofa you are buying is made by these hands, not by the person at the front desk.
Two questions to end on
Ask what happens if a cushion collapses in year three, and ask for the answer in writing on the invoice rather than as a verbal reassurance. Then ask whether you can come back and see your own sofa at frame stage before it is covered.
Both answers should be an easy yes. Ours are. Our workshop is open any working morning and the tea is free — call 9849239091 before you set off so somebody is expecting you.
— Written in the workshop. Questions to 9849239091 on WhatsApp.