How to Choose a Shopfitter: 10 Questions to Ask

The ten questions

Ask them all, and pay attention to how quickly the answers come. A contractor who owns their own workshop answers question one instantly.

• ✓1. Do you manufacture in-house, or subcontract the joinery?
• ✓2. Who will be my single point of contact from design to handover?
• ✓3. Have you worked in this shopping centre or with this landlord before?
• ✓4. What is your public liability cover, and can I see the certificate?
• ✓5. Can I visit your workshop and see work in progress?
• ✓6. How do you price variations once we are on site?
• ✓7. What is realistically the programme, including landlord approvals?
• ✓8. Who handles out-of-hours access, hoarding and waste?
• ✓9. What does your snagging and handover process look like?
• ✓10. What happens six months later if something fails?

Why in-house manufacture matters

When the joinery is subcontracted, every detail question travels through a middleman, and every delay is somebody else's fault. When it is made in the same building as the drawing, problems get solved on the bench in an afternoon.

It also changes quality control. We see our own work leave the workshop and go up on site, which is a strong incentive to build it properly the first time.

Red flags

None of these are automatically disqualifying, but each one deserves a straight answer.

• ✓A single-page quote with no breakdown
• ✓No named project manager
• ✓Reluctance to show you completed work of a similar scale
• ✓A programme that ignores landlord approval time
• ✓Large up-front deposits with no staged payment schedule

What good looks like

A good shopfitter tells you what will be difficult before you sign. They give you a programme with landlord approval built in, they photograph progress, and they hand over a unit that is ready to trade rather than ready to snag.