If you are about to order custom joinery from a Chinese factory and you only read one line of this page, read this one: nothing is actually happening until a drawing is signed, and every date anyone quotes you — production, shipping, arrival — is counted from that signature, not from the day you sent your first email. Everything below is what happens on either side of that signature, in the order it happens.

This page is written for the person who will be holding the paperwork: renovating homeowners doing a whole house at once, builders and joinery contractors buying for a project, kitchen retailers, wholesalers and developers. It is published by MeShome, a custom cabinetry maker in Foshan, Guangdong, that ships to Australia and New Zealand. Where a figure comes from our own operation we say so. Where it comes from a government rule we name the rule. Where we do not have a number, we say that too, rather than making one up.

What does the whole process look like, start to finish?

Eight stages. The first four are all yours; the factory cannot start until you finish them.

Almost every horror story you will read online is a stage 2, 3 or 4 problem that only became visible at stage 8.

Who draws the plans — you or the factory?

Normally the factory draws them, from your measurements. You are not expected to arrive with CAD files. What you are expected to arrive with is dimensions and intent: how wide the run is, where the window and the sink waste are, whether the door swings into the space, and what you want the finished thing to look like.

Reference images do most of the talking. If you can point at a photograph and say "this door profile, this colour, these handles," most workshops can work from that; at MeShome the practical boundary is not the picture, it is whether the process behind it exists in the supply base rather than whether it has been drawn in advance. We work as an integrator: the family-owned panel factory makes the carcasses, and doors, lacquer, glass, metal and carved work come from a network of specialist workshops we buy from. That is why one order can cover several different construction types instead of forcing you to place four separate orders.

What the factory cannot do is decide things for you. Handle position, whether a drawer stack replaces a cupboard, which side a fridge cabinet opens — those are your calls, and if you leave them blank someone in a workshop 8,000 km away will make a reasonable guess that turns out to be wrong.

What has to be nailed down before anyone can quote you?

Six things. Missing any one of them is the usual reason a quote takes a week instead of a day.

• Room list and rough sizes. Not final dimensions — just enough to know whether this is a $5,000 order or a $50,000 one.
• Carcass material. Multi-layer plywood, moisture-resistant particleboard or something else. Our board selection guide for Australia and New Zealand covers which belongs where, and one biosecurity consequence most suppliers never mention.
• Door finish. Laminate, lacquer, veneer, and within lacquer whether it is matte, gloss or soft-touch. This is usually the single biggest price lever in the whole order.
• Hardware tier. Genuine Austrian Blum, or Higold, which is the brand of a publicly listed Chinese company and our budget alternative. Blum comes in two tiers at MeShome: fully customs-traceable at a 20% premium over our standard quote, and our standard quote, which is genuine imported Austrian Blum but from channels that cannot be traced through customs. We would rather tell you that than let you find out later.
• Benchtops: in or out. This one has a hard legal answer in Australia — see the paperwork section below.
• Destination and delivery term. Port, or door. FOB, CIF, DAP or DDP. These are not interchangeable and they decide who pays the import tax.

Our minimum order is USD 5,000 in a single order. A single small kitchen can sit under that; a kitchen plus a wardrobe usually clears it comfortably.

How do measurements work when the factory is 8,000 km away?

Someone on your side measures, and that measurement is the thing everything else is built on. There are three normal ways to do it: you measure, your builder or cabinet installer measures, or you appoint someone locally to do it. For buyers who want it taken off their hands, arranging measurement on site is something we can organise rather than something you have to solve alone.

Two rules that save more money than anything else on this page:

• Measure after the walls are final, not before. Plaster, tiling and rendering all move the finished face. A measurement taken off a stud wall and a measurement taken off the same wall after tiling are different numbers, and only one of them is the one your cabinet has to fit into.
• Build in a filler, always. Rooms are not square. Experienced joinery buyers specify scribe fillers at the ends of every run so the run can be adjusted on site. A run built to the exact millimetre of a drawing, in a room whose walls are not parallel, is a run that does not go in.

If your site is not ready to measure yet, that is not a reason to wait to talk to a factory. It is a reason to lock finishes and hardware first, so that when the measurement arrives the drawings can be produced immediately.

What does signing off the drawings actually commit you to?

It starts the production clock, and it is the last cheap moment to change anything. Every lead time we quote is measured from drawing sign-off. Before it, changes cost an email. After it, changes cost panels that have already been cut, and in practice they cost time as well.

What you should actually be doing when you "check the drawings":

• Read the dimensions against your own measurements, not against your memory of them.
• Check appliance cutouts against the appliance spec sheets you actually bought, not the models you were looking at three months ago. Ovens and dishwashers vary by tens of millimetres between models.
• Check which way every door and drawer opens, and what it hits when it does.
• Check the services: where the waste, the gas, the power points and the rangehood duct come through, and whether a cabinet back is in the way.
• Check the elevations, not just the plan. Most sign-off mistakes are height mistakes.

This is a slow hour that removes most of the risk from the whole project. It is worth doing badly-tempered and on paper.

Should you order a sample before the full order?

If the finish matters to you and you have not seen it in daylight, yes. Sampling runs 2 to 4 weeks at MeShome and it is the cheapest insurance available on a custom order, because colour is the thing that photographs least reliably. A gloss white and a warm white look identical on a phone screen and nothing alike in a room with a north window.

What a sample is good for: finish, colour, edge quality, hardware feel, the actual weight and thickness of a door. What it is not good for: proving that the factory can hold dimensions across a long run. That is what drawings and pre-shipment checking are for.

A sample is also a cheap way to find out how a supplier behaves when something is not right. How they answer that email tells you more than any certificate.

When do you pay, and what does each payment buy?

A deposit starts production, and the balance is paid before the goods ship. That is our standard structure and it is the standard structure across the industry. The logic is not arbitrary: custom cabinetry cannot be resold to anybody else, so the factory is carrying the entire risk of a bespoke build, and you are carrying the risk that the goods are not what you signed off.

That second risk is the one you can actively manage, and the tools are ordinary:

• Start smaller than your whole house. One room, or one order at our USD 5,000 minimum, before you commit a full container.
• Appoint a third-party inspector. You can have an independent agency inspect before the balance is paid and before the container is sealed. A supplier who resists this is telling you something.
• Ask for a letter of credit if the value justifies the bank fees. It is negotiable on larger orders.
• Visit. Buyers who are placing repeat orders often come and look. It is welcome, and it is a normal thing to do rather than an accusation.

What you should be suspicious of is any structure that has you paying the full amount up front with nothing verifiable in between.

What actually gets checked before the container doors close?

Three separate things, and buyers routinely only think about the first:

• The goods. Assembly, alignment, finish defects, hardware operation, and count. Count matters more than people expect — a missing toe-kick or a box of handles that did not go in becomes a six-week problem once the container has sailed.
• The packing. Cabinets are damaged in transit far more often than they are made badly. Corner protection, film, and whether anything heavy is stacked on a door.
• The documents. This is the one that costs the most when it is wrong, because it is discovered at the border rather than in the workshop. See the next section but one.

Our material declarations are part of this: board at ENF grade, meaning formaldehyde emission at or below 0.025 mg/m³ under GB/T 39600, which is the top grade in that standard and sits above E0 and E1; E0 and E1 board are also available if a project specifies them. Flame-retardant B1 board under GB 8624 is available as an option, and we work to the applicable AS/NZS standards for the categories they cover. Ask for these in writing before shipment, not after arrival.

Does it arrive flat-packed or assembled?

Ask, before you sign anything, and get the answer in writing. This single question changes your installation cost, your container count and your programme, and it is the question Australian buyers on renovation forums say made the biggest practical difference to how their order went.

Assembled cabinets arrive ready to lift into place, which shortens the site work dramatically and reduces the number of ways an installer can misread an instruction. They also take up considerably more container volume than the same cabinets flat-packed, which affects freight. Flat-packed is cheaper to ship and slower on site, and it moves some of the risk of a mistake onto whoever assembles them.

Neither answer is wrong. What is wrong is discovering which one you bought when the container is opened.

What is not in the box?

The exclusions do more damage to budgets than the price of the cabinets. Confirm each of these explicitly:

• Appliances — almost never included, and appliance choice drives cabinet dimensions rather than the other way round.
• Benchtops and splashbacks — sometimes included, sometimes not, and in Australia the material question has a legal answer. See below.
• Sinks, taps, waste fittings — often available, rarely assumed.
• Lighting and transformers — and whether they are certified for use in your country's electrical system.
• Installation — this is local work, done by a local installer. A Chinese factory does not fly a team to Auckland.
• Scribes, fillers, kick boards, end panels — cheap, easy to forget, and the reason a run does not close up neatly.
• Local delivery from port to site, and the crane or lift if the job needs one.

What paperwork has to travel with the container?

This is where Australia and New Zealand stop being one market, and where a supplier quoting both markets identically has not thought about your order.

Australia — the engineered stone rule is the one that destroys orders. Since 1 July 2024 the manufacture, supply, processing and installation of engineered stone benchtops, panels and slabs has been prohibited nationwide under the WHS regulations, and since 1 January 2025 those goods have been prohibited imports enforced at the border. Engineered quartz benchtops cannot be sent to Australia, including as part of a cabinet shipment. Natural stone, resin-free sintered stone and resin-free porcelain remain available. The burden of proof sits with the importer, and the Australian Border Force is explicit that a supplier's declaration on its own is not accepted as evidence, and that labels such as "crystalline silica free" should not be trusted on their own. If you are working from advice given by someone who imported a kitchen before mid-2024, that advice is now out of date in a way that can cost you the goods.

Australia — seasonal biosecurity. China is treated as an emerging risk country for brown marmorated stink bug, and goods shipped from China between 1 September and 30 April can be randomly inspected, with chapters 39, 94 and 95 — plastics, furniture and toys — inside that random inspection scope. This does not trigger mandatory fumigation for Chinese-origin goods at present, but note the contamination rule: non-target goods travelling in the same container on the same entry as targeted high-risk goods are managed together. A container carrying stone, steel frames and metal fittings alongside cabinets is worth thinking about for this reason. These settings are reviewed every season and must be re-checked before each shipment rather than assumed.

Australia — duty and GST. Qualifying lines enter at 0% duty under ChAFTA with a certificate of origin. Import GST is 10%. We have verified that New Zealand accepts an origin declaration on the invoice instead of a certificate; we have not verified that Australia does the same, so we will not tell you it does.

New Zealand — duty is 5% unless you claim the preference. Wooden kitchen furniture and other wooden furniture carry a normal tariff of 5%, with the China preferential rate free. That difference is not automatic. New Zealand Customs states plainly that a certificate of origin is not required for imports of Chinese goods, and that a declaration of origin made by the exporter on the invoice or any commercial document is sufficient to claim the preference. On a NZ$40,000 shipment, forgetting to claim costs about NZ$2,000 in duty and inflates the GST base on top of it. Ask your supplier to put the origin declaration on the invoice. It costs nothing and takes a line.

New Zealand — GST and levies. GST is 15%, calculated on goods value plus international freight plus insurance plus duty. A sea import above NZ$1,000 in value carries a Customs levy of NZ$73.87 and an MPI levy of NZ$44.57, NZ$118.44 in total before GST. If the container is opened for inspection, the hourly rate is NZ$133 including GST with a minimum charge of NZ$399. GST-registered importers using the goods solely for taxable supplies can claim the import GST back, which makes it a cash flow item rather than a cost — but the word "solely" is in the legislation for a reason.

New Zealand — biosecurity, and the exemption almost nobody quotes. Under the Import Health Standard for Woodware from All Countries, woodware made wholly of manufactured wood — plywood, particleboard, oriented strand board, fibreboard, veneer and chipboard — is exempt from the certification and inspection requirements of that standard. Cabinets built entirely from engineered panels therefore need no phytosanitary certificate and no treatment. Introduce genuine solid timber components — a solid edge, a solid frame, a timber benchtop lip — and the full requirements return: fumigation or heat treatment, a certificate, and a rule that the goods must be packed and shipped within 21 days of treatment or the treatment is void. Note that what Chinese factories call "solid wood board" is usually multi-layer plywood with a timber veneer, which stays inside the exemption. Timber packaging is a separate matter and follows ISPM 15.

Both markets — split your invoice. Goods value, international freight and insurance must be listed separately. Bundling them into one figure forces your broker to go back and ask for a breakdown, and if it cannot be produced, the whole sum can end up in the customs value.

Can a kitchen, wardrobes, vanities and a laundry go in one container?

Yes, and for most whole-house renovations that is the sensible way to buy. A single kitchen rarely fills a 40HQ on its own — a typical kitchen order from us runs about USD 3,000 to 8,000 FOB — while the freight for that container is roughly USD 1,900 to 2,500 to Australia and USD 2,500 to 3,000 to New Zealand at current rates. Shipping a half-empty container is how people end up concluding that importing is not worth it.

Combining rooms also removes the coordination problem that catches first-time importers: one supplier, one drawing set, one sign-off, one container, one customs entry. Buying the kitchen from one factory and the wardrobes from another means two of everything, including two chances for the finishes not to match.

The practical constraint is not the factory, it is your programme. Everything in the container arrives on the same day, so every room in it has to be measured before the drawings can be signed. If your bathroom layout is still undecided, either resolve it or leave it out.

How long does the whole thing actually take?

Counted from drawing sign-off, not from first contact. Add your own decision time — for most whole-house buyers that is the longest stage of all.

New Zealand runs longer than Australia, and the whole of the difference is in the shipping leg rather than the factory — production is the same 35 to 45 days for both markets. If a project needs to land sooner than this, the stage to attack is your own drawing approval, or the sailing schedule; production at 35 to 45 days has very little left in it, and a supplier offering to halve that is telling you something about the shipment rather than about the factory. Our full lead time breakdown for Australia and New Zealand shows where every week goes and what actually causes slippage.

What goes wrong most often, and whose problem is it then?

Read that column again. Most of the expensive failures are decided in the first four stages, by the buyer, at a point where fixing them costs nothing. That is the argument for spending an unglamorous week on drawings and specifications before spending a dollar on cabinets.

What should you ask a factory before you send the first drawing?

• Does it arrive assembled or flat-packed?
• What is the carcass material, in what thickness, and at what formaldehyde grade?
• Which hardware brand, in which tier, and is it traceable through customs?
• Are benchtops included, and if so in what material — and are you aware of the Australian engineered stone import prohibition?
• Who produces the shop drawings, how many revision rounds are included, and what does a change after sign-off cost?
• What is the payment structure, and will you accept a third-party inspection before the balance falls due?
• What is on the packing list, and what is explicitly excluded?
• Which documents will travel with the container, and will the origin declaration be on the invoice?
• What delivery term is the quote written on — FOB, CIF, DAP or DDP — and who pays the import tax and clearance under it?
• What happens if something arrives damaged or missing, and how are replacements shipped?

A factory that answers all ten in writing without being pushed is a factory that has done this before. If you want to pressure-test a supplier further, our buyer's guide to choosing a Chinese cabinet manufacturer covers verification, and our review of ten Chinese cabinet manufacturers serving Australia and New Zealand shows what a comparable field looks like.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be an importer or a company to do this?
No. Private homeowners import joinery for their own renovations, and it is common. What you do need is a customs broker at the destination, and to understand that the importer of record — you — carries the compliance obligations described above.

Can I order just wardrobes, without a kitchen?
Yes. Wardrobes, walk-in closets, bathroom vanities, laundries and TV and living room units are all made on the same line as kitchens. The only threshold is our USD 5,000 minimum order value, which a multi-room wardrobe package normally clears on its own.

How much can I expect to save against a local quote?
We will not put a percentage on this, because it depends entirely on what you are comparing and where you are. What we can tell you is what the landed cost is built from: FOB goods value, ocean freight, duty, GST, port and broker charges, local delivery and installation. Our landed cost breakdown for imported kitchen cabinets works through each line with a worked example so you can build the comparison against your own quotes rather than trusting ours.

What if I change my mind after sign-off?
Talk to us immediately rather than at the next milestone. Before panels are cut, some changes are still absorbable. After they are cut, a change means remaking components and it costs both money and schedule. This is why the sign-off hour matters.

Can I send a photograph instead of a specification?
For look and finish, yes, and it is usually the fastest way to communicate intent. For dimensions, function and appliance fit, no. A photograph cannot tell a workshop how wide your wall is.

Do you have distributors in my country?
We have no distributors, agents or exclusive partners in Europe as of August 2026, so a European buyer is dealing with the factory directly. For Australia and New Zealand, ask us about the current position for your market rather than assuming either way.

Where these figures come from

Our own trading figures — minimum order value, sampling and production times, payment structure, hardware tiers, board grades, the kitchen order range and the container freight ranges — are MeShome's published figures and are what we will quote you. The Australian engineered stone prohibition is from Safe Work Australia and the Australian Border Force prohibited import guidance. The Australian seasonal biosecurity position is from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry brown marmorated stink bug seasonal measures, which are revised each season. The New Zealand tariff, origin declaration, GST and levy figures are from the New Zealand Customs Service Working Tariff Document, its origin fact sheet and its published levy schedule, with the GST recovery position from Inland Revenue. The New Zealand biosecurity exemption and treatment requirements are from the Ministry for Primary Industries Import Health Standard for Woodware from All Countries.

Where we have not verified something, we have said so rather than filling the gap: we have not confirmed whether Australia accepts an invoice origin declaration in place of a certificate of origin, and we do not quote a saving percentage against local pricing. Rules change, seasonal settings change every year, and your own broker is the person who should confirm the position that applies to your shipment on the day it sails.

If you are working through a whole-house renovation and want to know what your particular room list would involve, tell us the rooms and roughly the sizes and we will tell you what the process would look like for it.