How to keep track of which supplier had which product

It is one of the quietly expensive moments in the job. The client points at the sofa, says yes, and asks about the lead time. You open the file and find a photograph, a price you noted in a hurry, and no supplier. An hour goes on reverse image searching and ringing round the showrooms it might have been.

The strange part is that this happens even though your actual supplier list is short. As one designer described their working pattern, they always went back to “the same 15 to 20 vendors”. Twenty relationships is not a data problem. It is a record-keeping problem, and it is entirely solvable.

A supplier is not a column in a spreadsheet

Most sourcing spreadsheets treat the supplier as an attribute of a product: one cell, next to the price, often abbreviated. That works right up until you ask a question in the other direction. Who have I specified from this year? What is my discount with them? Did the last two deliveries land on time?

A supplier is a relationship with terms attached. The terms are the whole point. Trade discount expectations get discussed fairly openly among designers, and the numbers quoted in public sit around 20% to 40% as typical, with 25% described as a sweet spot. One designer was blunter, saying they “wouldn’t even look at a vendor that offers only a 10% trade discount”. Whatever your own threshold, you cannot apply it if you do not have your actual terms written down per supplier, rather than half-remembered from a conversation at a trade show.

What to record for every supplier

Six fields, and they take about four minutes to fill in the first time you place an order.

Trade account status. Do you have one, is it approved, and what name is it under. Half the delays in this job are somebody discovering at the wrong moment that the account was never set up.

Discount and how it is applied. The headline percentage, whether it is off RRP or off a separate trade list, and whether it changes above a volume. Note the date, because terms move.

The rep name and direct contact. A named person who answers email is worth more than a general enquiries inbox, and the difference shows up when something goes wrong. Record who replaced them when they move on.

Lead times you have actually experienced. Not the ones on the website. More on this below.

Sample policy. Free memos, chargeable, refundable on return, or not offered at all. This determines how you specify from them under time pressure, and it belongs alongside the rest of your material and sample organisation.

Minimum order. Metreage minimums on fabric, minimum spend on first orders, pallet minimums on tile. The reason a beautiful option gets pulled from a scheme late is very often a minimum nobody checked.

Measured lead times beat quoted lead times

Every supplier quotes a lead time. It is a marketing number as much as an operational one, and it usually describes the best case with everything in stock. What matters to you is the distribution you have personally seen: the eight weeks that turned into fourteen, the joinery house that has never once been late, the lighting brand that is quick on stock lines and glacial on anything bespoke.

So record two numbers, not one. Quoted, and last actual. After three orders you have something better than any brochure, which is evidence. It changes how you programme a project and it changes what you promise a client, which is the promise that gets remembered.

Write down the reason for any variance too, in six words. Fabric on backorder. Custom size. Container held at port. The pattern tells you who to use when the install date is immovable.

How to handle discontinued lines

Ranges are withdrawn constantly and nobody tells you. A library full of products that cannot be bought is worse than a small one, because it wastes a decision you have already made and it does so at the point of specification, when there is no time left.

The rule is simple: mark the product, keep the supplier. Flag the item as discontinued rather than deleting it, because you will want to know what you used in that room three years from now. Then, while you still remember the piece, note the nearest live equivalent, usually from the same range or the same supplier. That one line is the difference between a five-minute substitution and starting the search from nothing. When a withdrawal is announced, check the live project first: the only urgent question is whether anything specified is affected.

The once-a-year cull

Once a year, go through the supplier list and ask a single question of each one: have I specified anything from them in the last twelve months? If the answer is no, and there is no clear reason to keep them, archive the record.

This feels wasteful and it is the opposite. A list of two hundred suppliers you half-remember is not an asset; it is a search problem. A list of twenty five you know the terms for is the thing that lets you answer a client in the meeting rather than after it. Archive rather than delete, so an old project remains legible, and keep the rest current.

How the VADE vendor card does this

This is the part where we describe our own product, so read it accordingly.

When you save a product with one right-click, VADE keeps the URL, the title, the price and the image together, and it reads the brand from the page. The first save from a brand builds that brand a vendor card in your library, and every subsequent save from that domain files itself underneath. You do not maintain a supplier list; it accumulates as a by-product of working.

The card is where the six fields above live, so trade account status, discount, rep and lead times sit next to everything you have ever saved from that brand. When a client approves the sofa, the supplier is one click from the product, with the original page still linked, so the answer to “who was that from” takes seconds. If the supplier detail is trade-sensitive, you can share a client-ready board with trade prices hidden and keep the terms to yourself.

What it is not is a procurement system. There are no purchase orders, no deposits, no delivery scheduling. VADE is a sourcing library, and supplier tracking here means knowing who had what, on what terms. Ordering stays wherever you already do it. If the products themselves keep going missing before they reach a supplier record, start with how to stop losing the products you find.

How many suppliers should I actually be tracking?

Fewer than you think. Most designers return to the same fifteen to twenty suppliers, as one put it. Track those properly and keep a loose list of the rest, rather than maintaining two hundred half-filled records.

What trade discount should I expect?

Designers discussing it in public put the typical range at 20% to 40%, with 25% described as a sweet spot. One said they would not even look at a vendor that offers only a 10% trade discount. Terms vary by category and by volume, so record what you were actually given rather than what the brochure implies.

Should suppliers live in my project files or in one place?

One place. Suppliers outlive projects. If a supplier record lives inside a project folder, you lose it the moment that project closes, which is precisely when you need it for the next one.

What do I do when a product is discontinued?

Mark the product, keep the supplier. Note the nearest equivalent from the same range while you still remember it. A discontinued line quietly left in the library is how a specification collapses two weeks before install.

Is this a procurement system?

No. Tracking suppliers is about knowing who had what, on what terms, with what lead time. Purchase orders, deposits and delivery scheduling belong in your accounting or project software. VADE is a sourcing library, not a procurement suite.