FF&E PROCUREMENT

FF&E procurement is where a beautiful design becomes a delivered, install-ready interior. Through MERCANTIL, Hillary Kent manages furniture, fixtures and equipment for hospitality and residential projects — specification, custom production, procurement, quality control, freight and customs — so every piece arrives on site, on time and to standard.

You will see it written both ways: FF&E and FFE procurement mean the same thing — everything in a property that is not the building itself, from the furniture and lighting a guest touches to the equipment that keeps the place running.

It is the least glamorous part of a project and the part most likely to come apart. A scheme that looked resolved in renderings becomes a hundred purchase orders, a dozen workshops, several freight consolidations and a customs broker — against an opening date that does not move.

FF&E procurement for hospitality and residential projects

Whether you are opening a hotel, renovating a resort spa or completing a private residence, our FF&E interior design and procurement service takes the risk out of getting the pieces made and landed. We work to your drawings and brand standards, or design the package outright, then own the schedule from purchase order to installation.

Projects usually arrive with one of two problems. Either the design is resolved and there is nobody to make it real at the required standard, or the budget was set against catalogue pricing and the specified pieces do not exist at that number. We are useful in both cases — we can execute someone else’s package, or re-specify it toward custom production, where the economics are often better than high-end retail rather than worse.

What we source and produce

Casegoods and upholstery, dining and lounge seating, beds and headboards, lighting, rugs and textiles, art and one-of-a-kind objects — sourced through interior design sourcing or produced to spec with our artisan network. Custom production is the default, not the exception.

Casegoods and upholstery are usually made rather than bought, built to our drawings by workshops the studio has used for years. Lighting, ceramics and textiles come from specialist makers across Oaxaca, Puebla, Michoacán and Baja California Sur. Art and one-of-a-kind objects are found on the road. Where a piece is genuinely better bought than made, we say so and buy it.

A hotel furniture supplier backed by an artisan network

As a hotel furniture supplier, MERCANTIL manufactures with Mexican artisan workshops to hospitality durability specifications — the same capability behind custom furnishings across Four Seasons Cabo San Lucas and the Ritz-Carlton Reserve Zadún. Contract-grade construction, made by hand, with the story intact.

Contract grade is the constraint that separates hospitality work from residential. Seating has to survive commercial use; finishes have to tolerate cleaning chemicals, salt air and UV; dimensions have to clear a service corridor and a lift. Those requirements get resolved at prototype stage with the workshop, not discovered at installation.

Our process, from spec to install-ready

Specification and budgeting; sampling and value engineering; production management and QC at the workshop; consolidated freight, customs and last-mile logistics; and on-site installation support. You get one accountable partner instead of a dozen vendors.

Each stage produces something you can hold or approve — a specification package, a costed budget, a physical prototype, a QC report with photographs, a packing list, a delivery schedule. Nothing advances on assurance alone.

Lead times and the opening date

Custom production is not slower than contract ordering; it is differently shaped. A typical hospitality package runs four to six months from approved specification to install-ready delivery, with prototyping front-loaded and production overlapping freight. Because the workshops are in México and most of our projects are in México, Baja or the southern United States, the logistics tail is measured in weeks rather than the months an overseas container order can take — and no single sailing carries the whole opening.

We plan backwards from the opening date rather than forwards from the purchase order. If the date cannot be met at the specified scope, we say so before anyone commits.

Working alongside your design firm

A large share of this work is delivered under someone else’s name, by design. Design firms bring us in as their production and procurement arm when a scheme calls for custom Mexican work they cannot source themselves — the role the studio played with EDG Design at Zadún and with Other World Design at The Well Spa, Chileno Bay. The design intent stays yours. The making, the quality control and the landing are ours.

Request an FF&E proposal

Send us your scope, drawings or a room count and target opening. We will return an FF&E budget range and a production timeline. Request a proposal — or learn more about MERCANTIL sourcing and hospitality interior design.