The Framers Forum

Does anyone else have issues with popular mouldings from Arqadia being out of stock for extended periods of time ?

I mean it can't be that difficult can it? Nielsen Bainbridge have an amazing stock forecasting system and seem to have good stock levels all the time.

It's a fairly common issue to have an arqadia moulding that comes into stock and immediately is out of stock as the entire stock is used to fulfil backorders.

Unfortunately for us as we use chop they won't fulfil our orders on the backorder system.

In particular this seems to affect the Confetti range.

be keen to hear other framers experiences

Speaking from my own experience, 'twas ever so.

but if I wanted to have a dig at them I'd say they are very prone to discontinuing mouldings just as you get fond of one.


Just to be even-handed, Simon's stock indicator on their site showed a quantity of 1 of a particular moulding the other day.
Which I assume is 1 foot.

From past experience of dealing with Arqadia, it's not just the backorders that turn the newly arrived stock to be place as out of stock but also 'Forward Ordering ' which is where a contract framer has bought the whole stock, even if it's too much for them to take delivery, so Arqadia will hold the stock and ship out when the contract framer wants it

We have this problem with Arquadia as well.
We also find that Arquadias chop frames often don't fit together very well and due to poor packaging are often chipped at the ends. I've mentioned it to our Arquadia rep a few times, but it's not getting any better. We are starting to move away from Arquadia and more towards Lion and NielsenBainbrindge, as they seem to be able to make chop kits to a high standard.

We stopped ordering Arqadia chop due to frequent poor mitres a year or so ago, it sounds as if things haven't improved. Our current gripe is that we can order say 2m and 6m are delivered and the next time we ask for say 3m and they send 2.5; never get this problem with Nielsen or Centrado.

I very rarely have any issues with Arqadia, we order weekly off them and find the service very good.

Me neither I order very regularly usually 2 to 3 times a week. Arqadia UK is the European distributor hub for arqadia Europe so stock levels are usually high. There out if stocks as the OP knows is due to Korean shipping company going bust and nothing coming of the ships, hardly arqadia's fault. It could have just as easily been mainline Ashworth and Thomson, lion or simons.

Steve N wrote:From past experience of dealing with Arqadia, it's not just the backorders that turn the newly arrived stock to be place as out of stock but also 'Forward Ordering ' which is where a contract framer has bought the whole stock, even if it's too much for them to take delivery, so Arqadia will hold the stock and ship out when the contract framer wants it

Whilst this is true (we do it) the stock is never entered into Arqadias online inventory, and is accounted for when Arqadia place their orders, with us us it is ordered 3 months in advance and continually rolls over, as far as anyone else is concerned the stock never existed, and has no effect on their stock level, in fact the only possible effect it could have is if we cancelled an order, the our boxes would go into their regular stock.

I will mirror what Alistair has said Arqadia can't be blamed for a shipment stuck on a ship that can't move.

IFGL wrote
"Whilst this is true (we do it) the stock is never entered into Arqadias online inventory, and is accounted for when Arqadia place their orders, with us us it is ordered 3 months in advance and continually rolls over, as far as anyone else is concerned the stock never existed, and has no effect on their stock level, in fact the only possible effect it could have is if we cancelled an order, the our boxes would go into their regular stock."

That may be the case now, but it hasn't always been, I'm talking about before online ordering, you just had to rely on the girls on the phone when you rang your order in, to tell you the stock levels, and in the case I remember, it was a new Contract Framing customer who had left another supplier to deal with Arqadia, owing their old supplier over 80K, Arqadia let them take the whole stock of a brand new range of moulding , so leaving the rest of us (we had been with them for more than 10 years ) with nothing

As you say that is pre online ordering so not really relevent to how arqadia operate today.

IFGL wrote:I very rarely have any issues with Arqadia, we order weekly off them and find the service very good.

Can I ask whether you get chop kits from them - this is a real problem for us. I just can't understand how or why Arquadia send them out when they don't fit together.

Very rarely do we order chops, I am way to tight for that, I am a Yorkshire man, I squeak when I walk.

I have only ever used the aluminium frames on chop and never had a problem. What have arqadia said about the problem? I have always found our rep very helpful if we have had issues with quality, they like it to be reported back so as they can sort it out.

I got to a stage where I'd deliberately order a chop kit a few mm longer than I needed so that I could trim it on the Morso to ensure a reasonable join. I then thought I might as well order length as the waste was less expensive than the chop mark up and I was doing virtually the same amount of work. So I only order length only now and anything that really needs chop ie confetti is no longer on the chevron wall.

Having said that I find Arqadia's mouldings are superb both is variety and construction.

Graysalchemy wrote:I have only ever used the aluminium frames on chop and never had a problem. What have arqadia said about the problem? I have always found our rep very helpful if we have had issues with quality, they like it to be reported back so as they can sort it out.

I've complained to the sales staff on numerous occasions - they send out a replacement which is sometimes better. I complain to our rep every time I see him. He says that they don't make any money on chop kits -which doesn't surprise me as they have to send out so many replacements! It makes me wonder if they are actively trying to put us off using the service and order lengths instead. It's a real shame as they mouldings are good and we don't have space to store much moulding - so use chop services in order to offer a big choice.

Occasionally I have had something out of stock and the date for getting it back in keeps shifting back. I can normally get something the same or similar from a different supplier.
I've only ordered a handful of frames on chop if they've been too big for the morso, and they've been perfect, no problems at all.