A Receiving Warehouse for Interior Designers in Nashville: What to Send, and When, From Order to Install

Elite Anywhere runs a receiving warehouse for interior designers in Franklin, Tennessee, serving Nashville — receiving Monday to Friday, 9am to 3pm, by appointment — and from there delivers and installs each project in the client's home. For a designer, the warehouse works best when it is built into the studio's own routine from the first order, so this article sets out that routine in sequence: what to send us, and when, from the day a project opens to the day after install.

Most problems with receiving are timing problems in disguise. A list sent after the first carton lands. A vendor told the ship-to address but not the project name. A building rule discovered the week of install. None of it is difficult, but all of it has to happen at the right point. Here is the order that works.

Stage one: when the project opens

Before any orders go out, open the project with the Franklin warehouse. That means three things.

The ship-to line. Every order the studio places for this client should carry the same delivery address: the Franklin warehouse, not the studio and not the client's house. Put it into the studio's order template once, and every vendor gets it.

The project name. Decide what name every vendor should print on the order and the label, usually the studio's name together with the client's surname or a project name. That one line is what lets the warehouse match a carton to the right job the moment it is unloaded, and it should be identical on every order.

The receiving window. Tell vendors that deliveries are taken Monday to Friday, 9am to 3pm, by appointment, and that their carrier should book ahead. Passing that on when the order is placed avoids a truck arriving at dusk and a vendor rebooking from the other side of the country.

At the same point, the studio gets its login to Elite Anywhere's warehouse system, which is where the rest of the project will be followed.

Stage two: as orders are placed

Send the list. This is the single most important document in the arrangement, and it is the studio's, not the vendor's. For each piece: what it is, who makes it, the finish or fabric, the quantity, and the room it is for. Arrivals are checked against the list you sent us, so the list should describe what will actually turn up at the dock.

Send it in stages if that is how the project is ordered. A list that grows week by week is fine, provided each addition reaches the warehouse before the piece does.

Mark the pieces you want inspected. Cartons are opened and inspected whenever you ask, at no charge, but the request is most useful when it is on file before the carton lands, so it happens on arrival rather than after someone remembers. Good candidates are custom upholstery in a fabric the studio supplied, finishes matched to a sample, pairs and sets that must match, and anything bought from a photograph.

Stage three: when a vendor ships

Ask each vendor for the bill of lading and pass it on, or ask the vendor to send it directly. The bill of lading records what physically left the vendor, which on a split or partial shipment is not the same as what was bought. With it, the warehouse can tell on the day a delivery lands whether something is short.

If an order changes at this point, a fabric swapped, a quantity cut, a back order announced, update the list. Arrivals are checked against it, and an out-of-date list produces false alarms or, worse, misses a real shortage.

Stage four: as things arrive

This is the stage where the warehouse does most of the work and the studio mostly watches.

Each delivery is unloaded and its outer packaging condition-checked and photographed. If the packaging is damaged, the studio is told before the piece is stored, and the studio decides whether it is opened. Pieces flagged for inspection are opened, checked and photographed, then repacked. Damage is documented with photos, and the claim is filed with the vendor, which the studio will want to know about promptly so the replacement can be ordered.

Not everything is expected. About two arrivals in ten reach the dock with nobody having announced them, and when that happens the Franklin team calls the carrier and then the shipping company until it knows whose project the piece is for. A consistent project name on every order makes that search short.

Every piece is barcoded, and its status appears in the login. From the studio, a designer sees which pieces are in, which are still coming and where a shipment in transit has got to, and can raise a question about one item directly with the warehouse staff. What the studio should do at this stage is answer quickly when the warehouse calls about a damaged carton, because the decision about whether to open it, and what to tell the vendor, is the designer's.

Stage five: during the hold

Pieces wait at Franklin for as long as the project needs. Nothing has a minimum stay. The building is secured, the storage climate-controlled, humidity and pests managed, and stored goods are covered while they sit there.

The studio's job here is light. Keep the list current as the design changes. Use the login rather than the phone to check status. If a client wants to see a piece, they can visit, and if nobody can get there, the warehouse will photograph a stored piece again on request. Many designers send those photos straight on to the client as part of a regular update.

Stage six: two to three weeks before install

As the house nears completion, the warehouse needs a different set of information, about the destination rather than the goods.

A firm readiness date. When the floors, paint and trades will be finished, so the delivery is not booked into a house with a painter still in the living room.

The way in. Steps, stair turns, narrow halls, the floor each room is on, where a truck can stop. Anything that might not go up the stairs should be raised now; hoisting is offered, and it needs planning ahead.

The building, if there is one. A condominium or managed building will usually want a certificate of insurance before the crew comes in, and a freight elevator and loading window booked. Some designers arrange this themselves. Elite Anywhere will provide the certificate on request and book the elevator and window with the building instead, if you send the building's requirements.

The placement plan. Which piece goes in which room, where the art hangs, which mirrors go on which walls, which fixtures need hanging. A marked-up floor plan is ideal.

Who will be there. The designer, the client, a contractor with the keys. The crew needs a name to call on arrival.

For a large house, this is also the moment to agree whether the install will run over more than one day. Big jobs that will not fit in an ordinary working day can run multi-day, planned with the designer in advance.

Stage seven: install day

Orders from all the vendors leave Franklin together on one delivery. The client gets a text about 30 minutes before the crew arrives, and can follow the truck with live tracking.

Before anything is carried in, the route through the house is protected, with blankets and coverings over railings, door frames and anywhere the delivery passes. Professional equipment takes the weight of heavy pieces. Every piece goes to the room on the placement plan, where it is unpacked, assembled and set in place. The crew hangs art and mirrors, mounts wall pieces, levels case goods, and hangs light fixtures for an electrician to wire. Crews are sized to the job, and a designer who wants a sofa moved a few inches after seeing it in the afternoon light can simply ask.

The packaging goes back on the truck, every carton and blanket. The last thing the crew does before driving off is ask the client two questions, whether anything arrived damaged and how the day went, and the answers are recorded as the sign-off, which Elite Anywhere keeps on file. Everything handled with care.

Stage eight: the day after

Close the project cleanly. Check the login for anything still outstanding, such as a back-ordered piece that will arrive later and need its own delivery, and confirm with the warehouse what should happen to it. If any claim is open with a vendor, the photographs from receiving are the record behind it. And keep the project's history: condition was photographed on arrival, during storage where requested, and again at delivery, so if a question comes up months later about a mark on a table, there is an answer.

What comes back to the studio

A routine runs in both directions. The studio sends the warehouse information at each stage; the warehouse sends information back. Knowing what to expect, and from whom, is what lets a designer stop chasing.

• When a delivery lands: its arrival shows in the login, with photographs of the packaging as it came off the truck.
• When packaging is damaged: a call or message before the piece is stored, asking what the studio wants done.
• When an inspection is done: photographs of the piece out of its carton, so the designer sees what the warehouse saw.
• When something arrives unannounced: word that it is in, once the team has matched it to the project.
• When a claim is needed: the documented damage, and confirmation that the claim has gone to the vendor.
• During the hold: fresh photos when asked for, and answers to messages sent through the login.
• On install day: a text to the client about half an hour before the crew, live tracking of the truck, and the sign-off record afterward.

If a studio finds itself calling to ask whether something has arrived, one of the earlier stages has slipped, usually the project name or the list. Fixing that is quicker than making the calls.

The slips that cost the most time

Three small omissions cause most of the friction a studio feels with any receiving warehouse.

One vendor uses a different name. Eleven orders say the client's surname and the twelfth says the studio's project code. The twelfth arrives as an unidentified carton and has to be traced. A single standard line in the order template prevents it.

The list lags the orders. A piece ordered by phone on a Friday is not on the list when it lands the following week. It is matched in the end, but only after a detour. Adding to the list at the moment of ordering, not at the end of the week, prevents it.

Inspection is asked for after the fact. A designer decides, the week before install, that a custom chair should have been checked when it arrived. It can still be opened and inspected if you ask at that point, at no charge, but by that point any fault is close to install day rather than months ahead of it. Marking pieces for inspection when they are ordered prevents it.

The whole routine on one page

For studios that like a checklist pinned above the desk: open the project and agree the ship-to line and project name; pass the receiving window to every vendor; send the list as orders go out and mark pieces for inspection; collect bills of lading as vendors ship and update the list when orders change; answer quickly when the warehouse calls about damage; use the login and fresh photos during the hold; two to three weeks out, send the readiness date, the way in, the building's rules, the placement plan and an on-site contact; agree a multi-day plan if the house is large; be there, or have someone there, on the day; and close out any back orders and claims afterward.

Why the order matters

Each stage depends on the one before it. The project name makes matching possible. The list makes checking possible. The bill of lading makes shortages visible. The inspection requests catch damage while the vendor can still act. The readiness date and the house details make install day possible. Leave any one of them late and the work shifts onto the worst possible day, the one with the client standing in the room.

Done in order, the studio spends very little time on logistics at all. That is the point of using a receiving warehouse in the first place.

Who else uses Franklin

Interior designers are the warehouse's main users across Nashville and Williamson County. Showrooms, galleries, furniture manufacturers, hospitality projects, procurement offices and private households also receive at Franklin, and Elite Anywhere installs for all of them as well as delivering.

Franklin in the network

Franklin is one of the ten warehouses Elite Anywhere staffs itself, and the network takes in 34 warehouse locations. Elite Anywhere delivers anywhere in the country and makes more than 50,000 deliveries a year. When a Nashville client relocates to another state, Elite Anywhere handles the move end to end, and the studio's routine stays the same at both ends.

Robert Sabo is Director of Operations at Elite Anywhere, which provides white glove delivery, receiving and installation from ten staffed warehouses, delivering nationwide.