What a Parquet Factory Needs Before It Can Quote You Properly

You send a PDF of the floor plan, a reference photo from a Paris apartment listing, and one line: "Versailles panels, walnut, roughly 180 m², what's your price?" Four days later a number arrives. It is per square metre, it is lower than you expected, and it is worthless — because the mill has priced a default panel in a default thickness with a default grade, and every one of those defaults will change once real information reaches them. The revised quote lands three weeks later, 28% higher, and now you are the one explaining a budget movement to a client.

Knowing what information a parquet flooring factory needs to quote is the difference between one accurate number and a month of triangulation. Custom flooring is not a catalogue item with a variant list; it is a build specified across roughly nine dimensions, and each one moves the price independently. A mill that quotes fast on thin information is not being efficient. It is guessing, and you will pay for the guess later.

What follows is the package that gets a firm number the first time, grouped the way a mill's estimator actually reads it.

Why "here are my floor plans" produces a placeholder

An estimator pricing a custom parquet order is solving for three things: how much precious timber sits in each square metre, how many labour hours the pattern and finish consume, and how much of the raw stock ends up as offcut. A floor plan answers none of those. It answers the fourth question — total area — which is the easiest one and the least expensive to get wrong.

That is why a mill given only area falls back on defaults. It assumes the cheapest structure it offers, the mid grade, the standard module, a straight-lay format, and a finish that suits its own line. Then the quote comes back and every assumption gets renegotiated one at a time.

The fix is not a longer email. It is a structured package. The same discipline that goes into writing a product spec sheet for a Chinese factory applies here, with flooring-specific fields.

Part one: what the floor physically is

Area take-off, separated by zone — and the net-versus-gross question

Send room-by-room dimensions, not a single total. Length and width of each room matter as much as the sum, because a fixed panel module interacts badly with certain room widths: an 800 mm panel in a 4.6 m room leaves a 200 mm cut course down one edge, which looks like a mistake and costs extra labour. A mill given the dimensions can suggest a module that lands cleanly; a mill given "180 m²" cannot.

Then settle the definition. There are two square-metre numbers in every flooring quote and they are rarely the same:

• Net laid area — the floor area you will actually cover.
• Gross supplied area — what the mill produces and ships, including the cutting-waste allowance.

Straight-lay might carry a 5–8% allowance. Herringbone and chevron carry more, because angled cuts at every wall generate unusable triangles, and chevron in particular needs mirrored left-hand and right-hand blocks cut on opposite angles — order a single-hand set and half your room cannot be laid. Ordering a Versailles field with a border needs a third figure again: field area in m², border in linear metres, and the filler course between them called out separately.

Ask the mill explicitly which basis it is quoting on and what percentage allowance it applies. Anrantabu does not publish either figure, so put the question in the first email rather than discovering the answer at delivery. The format differences behind those allowances are covered in the comparison of herringbone and chevron production.

Pattern, module and repeat

If you are working from a reference photograph, say so and send the photograph — but pair it with a dimension. A pattern is defined by its module size and its repeat, and a photo carries neither. State the panel module you want (or ask the mill to propose one against your room dimensions), the block size within the pattern, and whether the pattern runs to the walls or sits inside a border.

Mills of this type hold an existing design library and also develop designs to a buyer's brief — Anrantabu does both, describing custom designs developed to buyer specification alongside its standing pattern range. If you are commissioning something new rather than picking from a range, that shifts the quote into a design phase with its own fee and its own turnaround, which should be priced separately and stated up front.

Structure: which of the four constructions

Solid, three-layer, multi-layer engineered, and a geothermal-compatible build are four different products at four different prices, and the choice is driven by your subfloor and your heating rather than by taste. Anrantabu offers all four across its categories, which means the decision sits with you and needs to be in the RFQ.

Tell the mill: subfloor type (concrete slab, plywood on joists, existing timber), whether underfloor heating is present and hydronic or electric, and the intended installation method (glue-down, floating, nail or secret-fix). Those three lines change the structure recommendation, the thickness, and sometimes the pattern feasibility. The trade-offs across constructions are set out in choosing between solid, three-layer and multi-layer.

Part two: what the wood and the surface are

Species — and the second-choice species

Name the species. Anrantabu works with Burma teak, black walnut, rosewood, Indonesian rosewood (Sonokeling), cedar and other imported hardwoods, and the raw-material cost curves for those are not remotely parallel. A quote for "dark hardwood" is a quote for whatever the mill has in the yard.

Two additions make the quote more useful. First, give a second-choice species and ask for both to be priced — the spread tells you how much of your budget is timber and how much is labour, which is the single most useful thing to know before negotiating. Second, if the design uses contrasting species for inlay or border work, name every species in the assembly, not just the field. A mixed-species floor with an unnamed accent timber creates a documentation problem at import that is far more expensive than the accent timber itself.

Grade and acceptable variation

"Select," "rustic," "natural" and "character" are not standardised terms across suppliers. A quote priced against one mill's rustic grade and delivered against another's is the most common source of an appearance dispute.

Ask which grading standard the mill works to and ask for the written defect limits behind each grade name — maximum knot diameter, whether sapwood is permitted and in what proportion, permitted colour spread, filled versus unfilled checks. Anrantabu does not publish a grading standard, so treat this as an open question to resolve in writing before the order rather than an assumption. Then agree that variation will be defined by a set of boards spanning the acceptable range, not by one flattering board.

Finish, coats and cure

A hand-applied oil finish and a machine-applied UV lacquer are different products with different lead times, different maintenance obligations and different on-site repair behaviour. Anrantabu finishes its flooring with multi-coat hand-rubbed natural wood wax oil applied and buffed by hand, so the quote you receive reflects a labour-bound process rather than a line-speed one.

State the sheen you want, whether the floor should be pre-finished or supplied raw for site finishing, and whether you need a maintenance kit shipped with the order. Then ask how many coats are applied and how many days pass between the last coat and packing — that interval sits at the end of your lead time and is frequently omitted from schedules.

Part three: what the job is

Trim, stairs and transitions, quoted with the floor

This is where money leaks. Skirting, thresholds, transition strips and stair components ordered later are ordered from a different timber lot, and on a species with real colour spread the difference is visible from across the room. Mills that run a full floor-to-trim offering — Anrantabu produces staircase treads, risers, nosings and handrails plus skirting, mouldings and thresholds from the same timber lot as the floor — can hold the batch together, but only if the whole scope is in the same RFQ.

So send: linear metres of skirting with the height and profile you want, number and dimensions of thresholds by type (wood-to-wood, wood-to-tile, wood-to-carpet), and for stairs the number of treads and risers with rise, going and total width, plus a photograph of the existing stair carcass if there is one.

Destination climate, delivery date and site conditions

Tell the mill where the floor is going. A floor bound for Phoenix, one bound for London and one bound for Singapore should not ship at the same moisture content, and the mill can only work to your destination if it knows what it is. Ask what moisture content the floor will ship at, what instrument verifies it, and whether the mill will dry to a buyer-specified band. None of those are published figures here — they are questions for the first call.

Also give the date the floor is needed on site and whether the building will be climate-controlled before delivery. A mill quoting against a real installation window prices differently than one quoting into a vacuum, and a project schedule stated as "per project schedule" — which is how Anrantabu describes its lead time — only becomes a date once the mill knows yours.

The commercial frame

Finally, the terms. State the Incoterm you want quoted and confirm the mill can offer it; EXW, FOB and CIF put wildly different amounts of work and risk on your side. Ask which loading port the mill ships from, since a Huizhou plant sits between Shenzhen and Guangzhou port options and the choice affects trucking and cut-off dates. Confirm the payment structure — T/T with terms confirmed per order is what Anrantabu states, so the deposit percentage and the balance trigger are negotiable line items rather than fixed ones. If you want a pre-shipment inspection to gate the balance payment, say so now, not after the goods are boxed. The Incoterm choice alone is worth getting right first time; the practical differences are laid out in the FOB, CIF and EXW comparison.

The quote package in one table

Questions to ask back before you accept the number

A quote is a document you interrogate, not a number you accept. Six questions turn a price into something you can put in front of a client:

1. Is this quoted on net laid area or gross supplied area, and what waste allowance is included?
2. What structure, total thickness and wear-layer thickness is this priced on?
3. What grade is this, and what are the written defect limits for that grade?
4. What moisture content will the floor ship at, and how is it measured?
5. How many days from deposit to packing, and how many of those days are curing?
6. How long is this quote valid, given timber cost movement?

Question six matters more in this category than in most. Precious hardwood pricing moves, and a quote with no stated validity period is an invitation to a revision. Ask for a validity window in writing. If two mills come back with a 40% spread on what you believe is the same specification, the reasons are usually structural rather than commercial — the breakdown of why China quotes for the same spec differ walks through where the gap normally hides.

What to send in your first email

Assemble this once and it serves every mill you approach, which also makes the quotes comparable:

• Floor plan with room-by-room dimensions and total net laid area
• Reference photograph plus the pattern module and block size you want
• Structure, subfloor description, heating type, fixing method
• Species first choice and second choice, with every accent species named
• Grade expectation and a request for the mill's written grade definitions
• Finish type, sheen, coats, and whether a maintenance kit is needed
• Skirting linear metres and profile, threshold schedule, stair schedule
• Destination city, required on-site date, and whether the site is climate-controlled
• Requested Incoterm, destination port, target payment structure
• A direct request for quote turnaround time and quote validity period

Anrantabu Flooring works on an OEM and ODM project-supply basis with a project-based MOQ rather than a published unit minimum, and its stated inquiry route is exactly this — send floor plans, timber preferences or a project brief. That model rewards a complete package, because there is no standard SKU to fall back on. Before you send it, it is worth confirming the mill is a mill: the physical checks in verifying a parquet flooring plant take about forty minutes. The plant details, structural systems and product scope are on the Anrantabu Flooring factory page.