The ocean is a stage of your order, and it keeps its own calendar

Between an Italian workshop and an Indian site there is a sea voyage, and pretending otherwise is how projects get hurt. So we plan it as what it is: a stage with its own calendar — sailing schedules, port time, import formalities — placed in the plan from day one and worked backwards from the date your space must open. Treated that way, the ocean is not a risk; it is a timetable.

The order moves through five stages, and at each you know three things: what happens, what you receive in writing, and what can go wrong there — with who fixes it. No date is called a promise before the factory signs it; the quotation states what is included and what is expressly not, shipping and documentation among them. The distributor is us, from the offices in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy: between the workshop and your site stands one company, so a detail agreed at stage one does not dissolve at stage four.

Below are the five stages, from first email to the last crate in place. A reading suggestion: do not stop at what we do when everything flows — everyone promises that. Read what happens when something snags: that is where a supplier is chosen.

FAQ

How do you plan an order around an immovable opening date?
Backwards, starting from your date: delivery window, then the crossing with its sailing schedule, then production, then the decisions that must be settled for production to start. Where the arithmetic is tight we say so before you commit — sometimes the honest answer is phasing, with the pieces that define the space arriving first.
Which decisions of ours hold the calendar hostage, and until when?
Finishes, above all: production starts only once they are settled and the order is confirmed, so every day spent choosing a veneer moves the whole chain — production, sailing, arrival. We put those decision deadlines in writing at the start, counted backwards from your opening date, so you know exactly which choices are urgent and which can wait.
A slip in Italy, a booked vessel, an opening date in India — how do the three reconcile?
By replanning the chain the day we learn of the slip: the next sailing, the revised arrival window, and what it does to your date — put to you in writing, with the phasing option on the table if the arithmetic turns tight. What never happens is silence between a delay in production and an empty delivery window at your site.
A crate arrives damaged after the crossing — what is my part?
Send a photograph and the order number — that is the whole of your part. We open the file with the factory and the carrier and come back with a decision: which piece is replaced and on which sailing. Export packing is specified for the crossing precisely because this stage exists, and the survey report that supports a claim is ours to obtain, not yours to chase.
Several Italian factories, one project — how many shipments?
One arrival, wherever it makes sense to combine. Seating from one plant, tables from a second, storage from a third can leave as a single consignment under one bill of lading and clear customs once. Split them and you multiply the clearances, the paperwork and the number of dates that can move — and all three land on your site, not in Italy.

An imported order, stage by stage, with the dates that really bind

What happens at each stage, what gets written down, and where an import typically loses a week.

The first message
Tell us the use of the space, an approximate count, the destination city and the one date that cannot move. A dimensioned drawing saves a round of questions. The usual trap is describing a product instead of a use — we would rather ask five questions now than rebuild a quotation later.
The quotation
You receive it in writing: items, finishes, freight, and a plainly worded list of what is not included, with GST and duty shown as an estimate. An offer that stays silent on those two numbers is not cheaper, it is simply incomplete — and the comparison only becomes honest once both are on the page.
The confirmation
Finishes fixed, order placed with the factory, date confirmed in writing: this is where the calendar starts running, and we count it back from your handover. Time spent deciding a laminate is time taken out of the sailing schedule, and we say so while it is happening.
Production and the crossing
For several weeks there is nothing to look at from your side; on ours there are production updates, the consolidation and the shipping paperwork. If the plant or the port loses days, you get the revised window together with what can be done about it — air freight for the critical items, or delivery in phases — before the question reaches you.
Delivery, and after
The consignment arrives in the agreed window. Anything marked gets a photograph and the order number, and the claim becomes our file. Afterwards the address does not change: spare parts, one more desk in the same finish, or a document you need three years later for an audit.