Guides / Industry Analysis

Why a Factory That Makes Anything Makes Nothing Well

September 24, 2026

Send a specification to twenty Vietnamese factories and you will get some version of the same sentence from most of them: we can make anything in wood.

It is offered as reassurance. It should be read as a disclosure. Here is what it actually tells you, and the one question that cuts through it.

What specialisation actually buys

A factory that has built your product category hundreds of times has accumulated four things that do not transfer between categories.

Jigs and fixtures that already exist. The tooling for a folding chair is not the tooling for a cabinet. A specialist amortises tooling across many customers. A generalist builds it on your order and charges you for it, or absorbs it and takes it out of somewhere else.

Known yield. They know how many boards of a given grade it takes to produce your part, because they have measured it on the same geometry repeatedly. A generalist estimates. Estimates on yield are where quotes go wrong, and the direction of the error is always the same.

Known failure modes. Every product category fails in its own way. Outdoor furniture fails at the fasteners and at water traps. Cabinets fail at the carcass squareness and the drawer alignment. Dining tables fail at the top: cupping, glue line, colour range. A specialist has already been burned by their category’s failure and has a check for it. A generalist finds out on your container.

A matched supplier base. Their hardware supplier, their panel supplier, their coating system are all chosen for that category. This is invisible until something has to be substituted at short notice, and then it is the whole story.

None of that is capability. All of it is repetition. Capability is what a factory could do. Repetition is what it will do reliably at volume, and you are buying the second one.

What the sentence usually means

In practice, we can make anything decodes to one of three things.

We will subcontract the parts we do not do. Which is fine and normal, but it is a lead time and quality structure you should know about rather than discover. Ask for the subcontractor list.

We are a trading company. The sentence is much easier to say when you do not own machines. The vetting guide has the three questions a trader cannot answer cleanly.

We are short of work. A plant running at capacity in its specialty does not chase categories outside it. Willingness to take anything is a signal about their order book, which connects to the wider margin pressure in the sector.

All three are survivable. None of them is what the sentence was meant to communicate.

The one question

Ask this, exactly: what did you ship the most of last year, by product and by market?

A specialist answers in a sentence. Outdoor acacia dining sets, about 180 containers, mostly Germany and the Netherlands. You now know their category, their scale, their species, their market conventions and their likely paperwork capability, from one line.

A generalist answers with a list of capabilities, or with a range of products, or with a question about what you need. That is not dishonesty. It is the accurate answer to the question for a plant without a centre of gravity.

Follow up with: what would you decline? A factory that names things it turns away is telling you where its edges are, and edges are what you are buying. A factory that declines nothing has no edges, which is the same as having no specialty.

When a generalist is the right answer

Being fair to the generalists, because sometimes they win.

A genuinely engineering led plant is often better for a first sample of something unusual, for a design that does not map onto an existing category, or for a low volume contract project with many different items. Hospitality packages in particular need coordination across categories more than depth in one, covered in the contract furniture guide.

The distinction is between a generalist with real engineering and a generalist with a wide catalogue. The first asks hard questions before quoting. The second quotes fast. You can tell them apart in one round of email.

What this does to your shortlist

It shortens it, which is the point.

Rather than sending one specification to fifteen factories, decide your category first, then find three or four factories whose centre of gravity is that category, and give them a complete specification. Three serious quotes from specialists beat fifteen from a spread, and the process takes less of your time rather than more.

The trade you are making is real. A specialist will say no to parts of your range. A generalist will say yes to all of it. Saying yes to all of it is the expensive answer, and the cost arrives later, which is why it keeps working as a sales line.

For the full shortlisting sequence, see how to source furniture from Vietnam. For why factories answer this way in the first place, the about page explains what the incentives look like from the other side of the email.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Is Vietnam Actually Cheaper Than China for Furniture?
• Why Rising Wood Exports Do Not Mean Healthy Factories