If we talk about Contract and Luxury Contract, a concept with a thousand meanings comes to mind. In the world of furniture design we talk about it all the time, also because the companies that design and produce contract furniture are often very different from each other and give the term itself a particular meaning. What we try to clarify below is what luxury Contract furniture generally means. A first aspect that needs to be clarified is that we are not talking about a product but a service, defined in Italian with the saying “turnkey”. The turnkey project service, although it concerns furniture in the strictest sense, goes further to involve the entire outfitting of a structure, including any building and plant works. There is a lot of talk about it today, why? Obviously, because the Luxury Contract and in general the production to order has acquired more and more strength in the Italian furniture market, in the face of the progressive crisis that the companies specialized in serial production have encountered in recent years. Today we are witnessing a transformation of society, a renewal of personal needs. Even in the field of furniture we end up looking for a personalization and a concentration of purchasing power in the hands of a client with a strong purchasing power, the production on order market has been the salvation for many of the companies. Italians who have been able to see the opportunities for growth.
Obviously, it is not necessary to specify that the Contract as a whole is very different from retail and serial production in general: if the production of large lots of furniture can count on economies of scale and amortize the design and engineering costs of a prototype, in the tailor-made, each project is unique, as is each piece of furniture produced. Times are tight and margins are reduced, so every mistake and every slowdown is a serious cost for the company. Orienting yourself towards a luxury contract furniture means deciding to join a completely unique opportunity for your home and its appearance. It would be completely complicated and prolix to explain what contract furniture can really mean in Italy and abroad. Also because we are talking about a concept that applies to the design of a house, a hotel or an office and that changes according to the requests of the individual customer. On the whole, many figures are involved, precisely because, as we have already specified in the previous lines, even before being a sector or a product, that of contract furniture is a process. This completely new and experimental process is changing the way of designing. It begins right when the work is entrusted to what is then called general contractor. Once the order has been obtained, the contractor legally undertakes (contractually precisely) to provide all the activities and products necessary for the work to be ready and completed on a predetermined date and, above all, to be carried out according to the agreed technical specifications.