While many designers, retailers and clients are experiencing the hardship of delayed furniture delivery, BELTEMPO outdoor furniture has provided our customers uninterrupted service through our seamless supply chain of independent manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping. The supply chain issues of material shortages, worker shortages, and shipping container cost spikes aren’t factors in our operation of creating artfully designed handcrafted furniture at the highest tier of quality. So we sat down recently with BELTEMPO founder and designer Marco Sangiorgi to have him share his vision in how he created luxury furniture with immediate response, short lead time custom manufacturing, and inventory ready to ship.
Q: For most furniture brands, there has been a very long turnaround time for wood furniture, with deliveries delayed more than a year. Why is this, and what has BELTEMPO done that is so different?
MARCO: Wood has seen these big delays because the pieces are made in countries like Vietnam and Malaysia yet they in fact use wood forested from the United States. So the distance and complexity of that is a wasteful. The pandemic is revealing many things that can be improved.
As a company BELTEMPO utilizes the best from each nation, yet brings them all together under one roof so to speak. In our facility in Peru, where I’ve lived for several decades, we have the best craftspeople at working with carpentry and metal, and our supply of sustainably reforested teak comes from Nicaragua—not far at all.
Q: Your designs also incorporate marine-grade 316 stainless steel. Is there the same efficiency in that material of your collections?
MARCO: Well, high-quality steel is abundant. Our re-stock process is to purchase the materials a year in advance. This allows us to stay ahead and maintain our materials inventory and needs. Our stainless-steel tubes and plates are thick, almost double compared to other manufacturers. And we do not waste resources. TIG welding technics are controlled for high resistance in order to obtain a high-quality finish, using sophisticated technology in abrasives and a lot of skilled manpower.
The expertise in working beautifully with metals dates back to the colonization of the Americas. The Spanish brought this technology in its early forms to this continent, and Peru is one of the places it has flourished. You see the artistry in the old architecture of the cities here.
Q: In-stock furniture ships within 3 to 12 days, while your lead times for custom-finish orders is only 16 weeks. With shipping so delayed right now, how have you made this possible?
MARCO: If you visit our facilities in Lima, you will be able to witness the difference that our company makes in design, quality and innovation. We own our manufacturing and warehousing, which is streamlined yet pays the abundance of care due to creating each piece. So our furniture is not outsourced to other manufacturers. A designer’s order is not waiting its turn along some endless backlog. We personally attend to each customer and provide seamless communication while producing the highest quality furniture made by artisan hands.
Q: You mentioned quality. That is a major point of pride for the brand. How has it been woven into everything BELTEMPO does?
MARCO: Because I’m Italian and its in our DNA since the Medici Renaissance. It’s in our DNA. I have chosen the maximum of quality for BELTEMPO products. This means that we prioritize professionals spending time on each piece instead of low costs and cheap prices. From a marketing point of view, it could be considered a mistake when today’s products tend to be almost disposable, but for BELTEMPO’s clients it is the guarantee that each piece has been made with high attention to details. We deliver attention that only craftsmen of the past used to implement when preparing pieces for the kings. With us, for the price of each piece, customers obtain much more from us than they would from any other brand.
