# Office Furniture Quality: Our Supplier Checklist > How we judge office furniture quality: guarantees by part, weight ratings in writing, spares you can buy and honest lead times before a range goes on sale. A buying guide from the Deskwell Gazette,… - URL: https://deskwell.co.uk/what-we-look-for-in-a-supplier-so-you-dont-have-to - Type: Blog post - Last updated: 2026-09-01 ## About this post - Written by Chris - Published 2026-10-15 - Part of the series “Behind the Desk” - Tagged Behind the Scenes, Company News ## Article We get asked how we choose what to sell. The honest answer is that we turn down more ranges than we take on, and the reasons are boring. Office furniture quality is not a feeling you get from a showroom. It is a short list of questions a supplier either answers or does not. Here is the list. It is the one we use, and if you buy from anyone else you are welcome to use it on them. If we would not print it on the page, we should not be selling it. ## The checklist a range has to pass 1. A guarantee in years, broken down by part. Every chair on our site shows a separate figure for the mechanism and for the fabric and foam, and every desk shows the structure separately from the electrics. A single headline number usually means the shortest one has been hidden inside the longest. 2. A maximum weight capacity and a recommended usage, in writing. The [Portland HD heavy duty task chair](https://deskwell.co.uk/portland-hd-high-back-heavy-duty-task-operator-office-chair) is rated to 205kg. The [Stealth Shadow 24 hour chair](https://deskwell.co.uk/stealth-shadow-high-mesh-back-ergonomic-24-hour-posture-office-chair) is rated to 170kg and for 24 hour use. Those are the supplier's numbers, and if a supplier cannot give us one, the chair does not go on. 3. Spare parts that can be bought. Castors, gas lifts, arm pads, mechanisms. A chair with no spares is a chair with a five year life whatever the guarantee says. We list them in [office chair parts and accessories](https://deskwell.co.uk/shop/categories/office-chair-parts-accessories) for the same reason we list the chairs. 4. A lead time the supplier will stand behind. We print a delivered-by date on every product page before you order. We can only do that because the supplier has told us a real number and keeps to it. Made-to-order pieces take ten to fifteen working days, and the page says so. 5. Full specifications, every one. Seat height range, back height, arm height, seat depth, the lot. Our [office chairs](https://deskwell.co.uk/shop/categories/office-chairs) category carries them in a table on every listing because the supplier gave them to us, and a supplier who will not is telling you something. That last point is the one that catches most ranges out. Plenty of suppliers will send a lovely photo and a paragraph of adjectives. Far fewer will send a spec sheet with the seat height on it. We only work with the second kind. The Portland HD. Rated to 205kg, and the rating is on the spec table. ## What we do not do We do not take a range on because the margin is good. At the prices we publish there is not much margin in anything, so that was never going to be the reason. We do not take one on because it photographs well. And we do not take one on because a competitor has it, which is how most catalogues end up the same shape. We also do not pretend the supplier is perfect. Manufacturers change designs, materials and fittings from time to time, and our terms say so in plain words. What we can do is make sure the version we describe is the version you get, and put it right when it is not. ## Why it matters more when you buy online In a showroom you can sit in the chair. Online you cannot, so the spec table and the guarantee are doing the job your backside would otherwise do. That is why we insist on them. A ten year structural guarantee on a desk is a supplier saying they expect the thing to be in use in 2036. A 205kg rating on a chair is a supplier saying they have tested it to that and will stand behind it. Neither claim costs us anything to print, and both cost the supplier something to make, which is exactly why they are worth having. If you want to shop by that logic, the [office furniture with a 10 year guarantee](https://deskwell.co.uk/10-year-guarantee-office-furniture) page lists everything on the site that clears that bar, and [heavy duty office chairs rated 150kg and over](https://deskwell.co.uk/heavy-duty-office-chairs-150kg) lists the chairs that clear the other one. Both are cuts of the same catalogue. Nothing was added to them to make the page look fuller. The list is not clever. It is just applied every time, to every range, and the ones that fail it stay off the site. That is the whole of our quality control, and it is why we can put a price and a spec on every page without worrying about what turns up.