If you are used to ordering something on a Tuesday and having it on a Thursday, our lead times will look long. They are long, and the reason is worth understanding, because it changes how you plan around them.
Two stages, not one
Every order has a handling stage and a transit stage. People tend to think only about the second one, which is why an order that is progressing normally can feel stuck.
- Handling, 3 to 4 weeks. Your piece is built. Stone is cut and finished, metalwork is made up in the finish you chose, the whole thing is assembled, tested and packed. There is no tracking number in this window, because nothing has been handed to a carrier yet.
- Transit, 2 to 3 weeks. The piece is with the freight carrier, moving and clearing customs. This is when tracking goes live.
Together that is 5 to 7 weeks. Up to 7 to North America, 6 to Europe, 5 to Australia. Those are outside limits rather than typical cases, and where a product page states its own lead time, that time is the one that applies.
Why the build takes weeks
Because the piece does not exist when you order it. We are not picking a box off a shelf, we are making the thing you configured, in the finish and size you selected.
Stone adds time that metal and glass do not. A block has to be cut, and it has to be cut to yield a piece without a flaw running through the wrong part of it. Some blocks do not yield what they promised, and the honest response to that is to cut another one rather than to ship a compromised piece.
Then it has to survive a journey. Packing stone and glass properly is slower than packing almost anything else, and it is the difference between a piece that arrives and a piece that arrives in fragments.
What normal looks like
Weeks one to four, nothing visible happens. No tracking number, no updates, no movement. This is the single most common reason people write to us, and in almost every case the order is exactly on schedule.
Around week four you get a shipping confirmation with a tracking number. From there expect two to three weeks, with quiet spells of several days between scans, particularly between leaving origin and clearing customs. A gap in tracking is not a lost order.
Planning around it
- Order before the trades, not after. If a room is being renovated, the light should be ordered at the start of the programme, not when the painting is finished.
- Give yourself a fortnight of slack on any fixed date. A wedding, a house move or a handover deserves more margin than the outside limit.
- Check the drop before you order, not after it arrives. A pendant cord can be shortened by an electrician in minutes. Extending one is a new part and another wait.
- If you need a firm date, ask first. We would rather tell you before you buy that a date is tight than apologise afterwards. On commercial and bulk orders we will schedule delivery around a site programme.
What we hold in stock
Some pieces are held rather than built. Those skip most of the handling stage and only carry the transit time. If timing is the binding constraint on a project, tell us and we will point you at what is available now rather than what is available eventually.
Full detail on lead times, tracking and what to do if something goes quiet is in our shipping policy, and you can always write to us with an order number and get a straight answer about which stage your piece is in.