What does COM mean, and when is your own fabric worth it?
Customer's Own Material opens the whole fabric market to a single piece of furniture. It also adds yardage, inspections and weeks to the date you were given, so here is which pieces earn it.
COM stands for Customer's Own Material. It is the line on a price list that lets a piece be built in a fabric you chose, instead of one from the manufacturer's own line.
In practice, the part that sounds like your job is ours. We pick the fabric and order it from the fabric house, have it shipped to the furniture manufacturer, and send the paperwork that tells them what it is and which order it belongs to. Customer's Own Material is the industry's name for it, not a description of who does the work.
It costs more and it takes longer. We call out details like this before anyone picks a fabric, so the cost and the calendar are part of the decision instead of a surprise later.
Why we reach for it
A manufacturer's own line is a finite set of choices. Good ones, often hundreds of them, and still a set somebody else assembled. COM opens the whole fabric market to a single piece of furniture, which is how a sofa stops being a model number and starts being yours.
That is most of why designers like it. A frame we trust, in a fabric nobody else is putting on it. The silhouette comes from the maker and the character comes from the fabric, and the combination is the part that does not exist anywhere else.
It also lets us tailor a piece to the room rather than near it. If the walls are a specific green and the rug has a specific warmth in it, we are not hunting for the closest neighbor in somebody's catalog. We pick the thing that actually belongs there.
And it makes exact coordination across vendors possible. The same fabric can land on the dining chairs from one maker and the window seat built by another, which you cannot arrange out of two separate in house lines.
What to ask about the fabric itself
Performance is the one most worth being specific about. Ask the vendor for test results rather than taking the word durable. The common measure is Wyzenbeek double rubs: 15,000 and up for light residential use, and 25,000 to 50,000 for a family room.
The harder a piece gets used, the more careful we are with the selection, so that what the fabric is made of lines up with the use it is going to take. If this is an ottoman in a family room and the house has dogs and kids, we check things out pretty intently to be sure it will wear well over time. If it is a guest bedroom accent chair in a lake house that gets used in the summer, we can be a little more relaxed about it.
A pattern needs more yardage than a plain fabric
The yardage a furniture vendor prints beside a piece assumes 54 inch plain goods. A fabric with a repeat needs more than that, so the motif can be centered and the seams line up. The number we give you already has that figured in, along with handling fees and the half to full extra yard that covers flaws.
The fabric has to get there, and it has to be the right one
Documentation is huge for this. There are a lot of moving parts with a COM, because the fabric is going from a third party to your furniture manufacturer, and that manufacturer gets tons of COMs every day. Your yardage is one of many rolls arriving that week, and the paperwork traveling with it is what keeps it attached to your order.
We ordered a velvet in a black colorway and sent it to the furniture manufacturer with a COM form. Because we had included a photo of the fabric we wanted, they caught a huge error: the green colorway of the same velvet had been sent instead of the black.
That photo is a small piece of paperwork doing real work. When a client is waiting 12 weeks anyway for a custom piece of furniture, getting it back in the correct fabric but the wrong colorway is a genuine disappointment.
What it does to the date
Production cannot start until the vendor receives the fabric, inspects it and approves it. The lead time on a piece in your own fabric is not only build time. The goods have to arrive, and then they have to pass.
A cutting for approval, a CFA, pauses production again and adds at least two weeks. Neither of those is a problem if you knew about them when you chose the fabric.
Where your own fabric earns the money
Good, Better and Best is a teaching tool rather than a ladder. Most homes hold all three, and the skill is knowing where to spend and where to save. The way we put it to clients: you don't need 'Best' everywhere, we'll guide you where to invest and where to save.
Your own fabric belongs on the same logic. The fabric that made you want the piece is the one worth the yardage and the weeks. Where the fabric is simply a color doing a quiet job in the room, the vendor's line will do it, and you will not think about it again.
The short version
COM stands for Customer's Own Material, which means a piece built in a fabric you chose rather than one from the manufacturer's own line. It costs more and takes longer: a patterned fabric needs extra yardage, the goods have to arrive and be approved before production starts, and a cutting for approval adds at least two weeks on top. It is worth it on the piece whose fabric is the reason you wanted it, and rarely worth it where the fabric is just a color doing a quiet job.
What people ask next
What does COM stand for?
Customer's Own Material. It is the line on a furniture price list that lets a piece be built in a fabric supplied from outside the manufacturer's own line, and on our projects we select it, order it, ship it and send the paperwork with it.
How much extra fabric should I order?
The yardage a furniture vendor prints beside a piece assumes 54 inch plain goods, so a repeat needs more than that, and we add handling fees and the half to full extra yard that covers flaws. We order the whole amount at the start rather than in pieces.
Why does a pattern need more yardage than a plain fabric?
Because the motif has to be centered on the cushion and the seams have to line up across the frame, which means cutting around the repeat instead of straight down the roll.
What is a cutting for approval and why does it hold things up?
It is a cutting from the actual goods, sent so the color can be signed off before anything is cut. It pauses production and adds at least two weeks, which is fine if you knew about it when you chose the fabric.
Can I order more of the same fabric later?
You can, but the dye lot shifts slightly from one run to the next, and the shift shows most in neutrals and solids. That is why we order the full yardage up front.
How do I know a fabric is durable enough for my house?
Ask the vendor for test results rather than taking the word durable. The common measure is Wyzenbeek double rubs, 15,000 and up for light residential use and 25,000 to 50,000 for a family room, and how hard we look depends on where the piece lands.
Where you are, and what we do there
COM is a great option in a lot of situations, and it lets us customize at a different level than a catalog allows. All we are after here is that you know what is involved when you say yes to it: the extra yardage, the receiving and inspection before anything is cut, and the weeks a cutting for approval adds to the date you were given.
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