Furniture from Bali

[mgabhi]

Hi There,

I am planning a vacation to Bali in March and would like to buy some furniture from there and have it shipped to California,USA.Has anyone out there bought furniture from Bali and had it shipped out of the country? If so,I would appreciate some insight and advice on which are the good places to buy furniture from where they also ship it to you in good condition.Thanks for your advice and time.

[Grim Reaper]

Ubud area is the best for artisans and furniture.

Shipping is a mysterious industry. Prices are non-transparent, ask anyone else who has done the same route and all will quote you a different price they paid.

What to be aware of?

Is it port to port shipping, door to port or even door to door. In other words, what is included.

The best way is to take a forwarding agent who will do all your paperwork (customs, clearance, import etc etc), all the work to be done like packaging, fumigating, loading, unloading, trucking etc etc.

Are you gonna ship loose items or are you gonna ship a whole container? If loose items, just know that the chances of your stuff arriving in good order are about 5%, no more. Reason being, your stuff is gonna be shipped in a shared container, so everybody will add to the container, everybody will damage your stuff, it might even get lost, easily.

If you ship a container, the container will be sealed in front of you or your agent and no one will touch it til you open it at customs in USA when it arrives.

But then again, a 20 foot container is about 28 cubic meters, that is a lot of space, a lot of items.

All in all, if you're new to this business and just want some items to be shipped and you do not know your way around in forwarding industry, you are up to be cheated and your stuff is gonna cost you a lot of money and will most likely be in pieces or chipped at the best when arriving in USA.

The best would be to find other people who also would ship loose items, so you all can fill up the container and then seal it and ship it.

But even better:

Why don't you buy from a shop, selling Balinese furniture in USA?

[tea4two]

sorry that I can't give you advice on your questions. But just a reminder to you from a friend's experience. A girlfriend of mine bought a really huge and gorgeous statue from there. This poor girl carried it from Bali to Singapore, then from Singapore to Germany and gave it to her boyfriend as a present. The statue stayed nice (on the exterior) during a few months but it was infested with white ants and rotted gradually.
It was propbably a unique experience, but still try not to get a bad surprise like the one of my friend.

tea4two