When we talk to our customers at Cane Direct, we often find that their ideas of cane furniture are really sort of stuck in the past.  When they visit our showroom they are bewildered at the selection, styles and fabrics that are now available.

Many many years ago, cane furniture was of a quite standard design, with maybe a choice of maybe three floral type fabrics, which was all well and good and our customers were more than happy with that and many of those cane three piece suites are still around today.  The industry of cane furniture has by no means stood still with new designs appearing every season.

One of the original suites that we sold at Cane Direct many years ago was called the Bahamas Suites, which was a bucket shaped chair, with a low back and foam filled cushions.  The bases were not sprung, as with today’s style of cane furniture, but our customers were very pleased with it as there was no where near the choice we are offered today. 

Like any other industry, cane furniture is constantly reinventing itself,  with different colour cane, different weaves, and even artificial cane which is suitable for indoor and outdoor use.  Surprisingly all these type of furniture are made in the same factories.  The newer more modern styles that are coming through, in the shops at the moment are the more box shaped cane suites usually in a cream or beige fabric.  At Cane Direct we can guarantee that our styles of Cane furniture are constantly changing, and who knows, this time next year a different style of cane furniture will prevail….. and you will know where to find it wont you?

Yesterdays post was a discussion on our new range of cane furniture from Malaysia, which we recently picked our self’s just last week, well i say picked what i really mean is that we have picked the first set of samples to be sent to us, its only when we get them in to our show room here in England, that we can check over the quality and that the size of the suites are a good size for the UK furniture market, there is no point in us ordering say two hundred suites that are going to be just to big for peoples conservatories, next we have to very carefully check out the quality of the furniture, remember these products are not coming from just round the corner, they are coming from the other side of the world, and once you have ordered them, you have have to pay for them before they leave the factory, so if the quality is not up to the standard that we are use to selling at Cane Direct, you all of a sudden have a major problem.

After that we have to consider the colour of the frames and also make sure that they are OK for the English market, once we have done all of that and the sample products meet all of our requirements, we then place the order with the factory, and of course the most important bit and probable the hardest bit is to try and decide just how many of each product of cane furniture you think you might sell.

On our post the other week, we were talking about where our conservatory furniture comes from and how we choose what furniture we are going to run in our range for the following season, most of the time our furniture comes from Indonesia, which we at Cane Direct have found to be the best quality furniture, and after fifteen years in the business we should know by now what is the best quality and where it comes from.

How ever one thing that we never do is become complaisant and are always looking for new ideas and new types of furniture from different parts of the world.

I have just got back from a trip to Malaysia on a fact finding mission looking for new styles of furniture for our show room and for spring next year,i must say a did see around ten or so different factories on my trip and the cane furniture has greatly improved from the last time i was there which was about three years ago, so i have ordered some great new samples from two of the factories which should arrive here in the UK, in about four weeks time, then we will decided which colours to have the furniture made up in, in time for the new season starting which is around March next year. The new products we have chosen are really special and very different from the type of products we would normally have in stock at Cane Direct.

We feel with conservatory furniture you always need to have that new and exciting fresh look to add to your range.