Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Restaurant Furniture from Vietnam: Rattan and Woven Seating for Restaurants, Bars, and Hotel F&B

Restaurant seating takes more movement, cleaning, and weight cycles than almost any other piece in a hospitality program. This guide covers how restaurant groups and hotel F&B teams specify handwoven rattan, bamboo, and all-weather synthetic fiber furniture for daily commercial use: the dimensions to fix first, where woven chairs wear, the seating standards buyers reference, and how to plan a restaurant program at container scale.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Custom Furniture Lead Times from Vietnam: What Drives Each Phase, and How Other Sourcing Regions Compare

A custom woven furniture program from Vietnam usually runs about three to seven months from a complete brief to a US port. This guide breaks lead time into its four phases (development, sampling, production, and transit), explains what drives each one, and compares Vietnam with Guangdong and Mexico phase by phase, so procurement teams can plan backward from an opening date with realistic buffers.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

What Drives the Price of Rattan and Woven Furniture Made in Vietnam

Two quotes for what looks like the same woven chair can land far apart. This guide breaks down what drives the FOB price of handwoven rattan, bamboo, and synthetic fiber furniture from Vietnam, from weaving labor and material grade to frame construction, run structure, and packing, and how to compare quotes on equal terms.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Importing Furniture from Vietnam: Duties, Incoterms, and Landed Cost Planning for the US, EU, and Australia

Importing furniture from Vietnam involves more than the headline tariff rate. This guide covers the current US duty stack (including Section 301 and Section 232 exposure), EU preferential access under EVFTA, Australian entry under AANZFTA, incoterms, lead times, container planning, and how to build a landed cost model that reflects what a shipment will actually cost at the destination.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Synthetic Fiber vs. Natural Rattan for Hospitality: Choosing by Climate, Use Case, and Lifecycle Cost

Every hospitality project with outdoor or semi-outdoor zones eventually faces a material choice between natural rattan and all-weather synthetic fiber. Both are produced across the same Vietnamese manufacturing corridor, often by the same factory partners. The right answer depends on where the furniture sits, what it will be exposed to, and how the property plans to maintain it over a full replacement cycle.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Handcrafted Rattan and Bamboo Accessories for Hospitality and Retail Programs

Hotels, resorts, and retail brands increasingly source decorative accessories from the same Vietnamese production networks that supply their furniture programs. Rattan and bamboo pendant shades, lanterns, baskets, and waste receptacles bring material continuity and handcrafted texture to commercial spaces, but sourcing them well requires understanding how accessory production differs from furniture manufacturing.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Hotel Furniture RFQ Framework: What to Include When Sourcing FF&E from Vietnam

Most hospitality FF&E procurement failures trace back to the RFQ stage, not the factory floor. The specification language and documentation buyers include in their initial request determine every quote, timeline, and quality outcome that follows. Here is what experienced procurement teams require before quoting begins.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Specifying Bamboo Furniture: What Buyers Should Confirm Before Sampling

Bamboo photographs beautifully and quotes attractively, which is why it deserves a harder look before it enters a hospitality program. Two chairs can look identical in a supplier photograph and behave very differently after one humid season. The five specification details that separate the two, where bamboo belongs in a property, and where all-weather synthetic fiber is the better answer.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Sourcing Furniture from Vietnam: A Buyer's Guide for 2026

Vietnam is now one of the largest furniture suppliers to North America and Europe, and buyers evaluating it for the first time usually ask the same two questions: is the quality good, and how do I find a factory worth trusting? A practical guide to what Vietnamese manufacturing does well, how to assess a supplier before you commit, and what to expect on lead times and landed cost.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Rattan and Wicker Furniture Manufacturing in Vietnam

Rattan, wicker, and all-weather synthetic fiber get used interchangeably in specifications, and the confusion costs buyers money. A manufacturer's guide to what each material is, how woven furniture is actually built, which construction belongs in interiors and which belongs poolside, and what to settle before a wholesale or project order.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Vietnamese Furniture for Boutique Hotels and Design Projects

Distinctive furniture and durable furniture usually pull against each other. Contract-grade pieces survive commercial use and look like everyone else's. Residential pieces fail within a season of hotel traffic. A guide to specifying handcrafted furniture zone by zone, and how custom hospitality projects actually run when the work is made by hand.

Read More
Matthew Lentz Matthew Lentz

Handcrafted Vietnamese Furniture: Tradition and Sustainability

"Handcrafted" has been used to sell so much furniture that it has stopped meaning anything. A look at what the word describes when the piece is made in Vietnam: how cane is graded and dried, why the weave cannot be mechanized, the sustainability case stated without exaggeration, and the four questions that separate suppliers who have thought about it from suppliers who have written about it.

Read More