Shipping your furniture and good taste overseas

So you have been relocated overseas. You have found a beautiful new apartment. But it’s not furnished. And the local furniture options are, ahem, problematic. Maybe you really don’t want to sleep with our wife in twin beds but want that California King? Maybe you really don’t care for the furniture style in Russia? Maybe the prices in the Middle East are fit for oil sheiks? Or maybe you don’t want to wait 8 months for villagers to hand carve your dining room table in the Caribbean? You are homesick for Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel and Design Within Reach and there are none to be found for thousands of miles. And none of these stores provides shipping services overseas. What can you do? Time to consult with an international shipping company that can arrange to ship your furniture, personal effects, and your taste overseas to anywhere in the world!

First, contact a reputable international shipping company with extensive experience in shipping household goods and furniture overseas. Note that this is not the same as a moving company. An overseas shipping company, also called a freight forwarder, will provide a warehouse in a central location – usually near the port from where the items will be shipped overseas. This will be a consolidation point. Then, get shopping. Pottery Barn, CB2, Ikea, etc. will deliver your purchases to the warehouse as part of their normal domestic delivery services. The warehouse will store and keep an inventory of your purchases. Then, when you are ready, the international shipping company will arrange for the items to be professionally loaded into a container at the warehouse and be taken to the port for departure overseas.

One advantage to this system is that you can take your time accumulating pieces. There is no deadline; you will just need to pay warehouse storage fees. Another advantage is that you can wait until you have a full container load to ship so you are not shipping containers that are only half full. Further, international shipping companies have extensive experience is arranging the packaging for overseas transport so that your items will arrive in prefect condition.

When you are ready to ship, the international shipping company will arrange the shipment of the furniture and household goods overseas to your destination. They will also do all export clearances and shipping documentation. You will need an agent on the other side to clear import customs and pay what ever duties are due.

Of course it is very important to insure your items. The shipping company can provide this for you as well. Generally, furniture is insured on an FPA (total loss) basis. This means that if the furniture is irretrievably lost or destroyed you will be covered. There are other types of insurance as well which you can discuss with your forwarder.

Finally, with the ease of catalogues and online shopping, you can even arrange all this from overseas so you don’t even have to come back to the United States to bring your American taste to your new home. All thanks to international furniture and household goods shipping companies.

William House is the author of this article on international shipping services. Find more information, about international shipping company here