Sector guide · Window furnishings & interiors
Selling a window furnishings business
Two mandatory standards apply to corded internal window coverings, one on the goods you sell and one on the installation you perform, and a buyer’s solicitor will read both before reading your profit and loss. This guide sets out what the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014 requires at every job, where the $3,300 QBCC licensing boundary sits, and why an installer network of ABN subcontractors is the liability found last and priced hardest.
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How do you sell a window furnishings or custom interiors business in Queensland?
Selling a window furnishings business in Queensland turns on two mandatory standards, not one. The goods are covered by the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014. The installation service is covered by the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014, register ID F2014L00363 on the Federal Register of Legislation, which commenced 1 January 2015. The ACCC enforces both. QBCC licensing starts above $3,300.
- Selling a window furnishings or custom interiors business means selling the machine, not the products.
- The machine is the lead engine, the measure and quote capability, the trade relationships and a low remake rate.
- Buyers pay most for a business whose enquiries and skills belong to the business rather than to the owner personally.
- Owners in this industry describe the business by its products. Every buyer assesses it by its process.
The short answer, in six lines
Everything below is expanded further down the page, with the register or the regulator named so you can check it yourself.
At a glance
- Who buys these businesses
- Competitors buying territory, fabrication capacity and a trade account book. Installers and workroom managers stepping up to ownership, usually with vendor finance. Shopfitters and joinery businesses adding a window furnishings arm to an existing fitout offer. Where the business fabricates rather than assembles, buyers look harder at the plant, the workroom lease and the skilled labour than at the showroom.
- The licence position
- No occupational licence is required to sell or install blinds, curtains, shutters or awnings as such. Two things bind you instead. Building work valued over $3,300 requires a QBCC licence. Corded internal window coverings attract two mandatory safety standards enforced by the ACCC, one on the goods and one on the installation service.
- What transfers on a sale
- Stock and componentry at valuation, workroom plant, vehicles and installation tools, the showroom and workroom leases by assignment, the customer and trade account database, and the forward order book. Trade marks transfer by signed assignment recorded with IP Australia. Supplier and distribution agreements move only with the supplier’s written consent where a change of control clause applies. Your ABN does not transfer.
- What a buyer checks first
- Compliance evidence, then remake rate. Whether installed product carries the installer name and contact details label required by F2014L00363, whether stock carries both warning labels in the exact wording, and whether cleats sit at or above 1,600 mm. Then whether deposits exceed the QBCC caps, and whether subcontract installers sit inside the relevant contract exclusions in section 13B of the Payroll Tax Act 1971 (Qld).
- Realistic timeframe
- Six to nine months from appraisal to settlement is a reasonable planning range. Longer where a landlord’s consent to assignment of a showroom lease is needed, or where a supplier has to approve a change of control under a distribution agreement. Longer again where a historic payroll tax position on subcontract installers has to be quantified first.
- What decides the price
- Remake rate, because it captures measurement discipline, fabrication quality and supplier accuracy in one number and flows straight to gross margin. Then the split between retrofit and new build work, whether the business fabricates or only assembles, the durability of supplier exclusivity after a change of control, and whether installation is performed by employees or by subcontractors.
The margin is made at the measure, and lost there too
In custom product every millimetre is a margin decision. A business with a documented measure process, trained measurers and a tracked remake rate is proving its margin is repeatable. One where the owner measures the hard jobs is proving the opposite.
A lead engine the business owns
Reviews in the hundreds, a website that converts, a showroom in the right catchment, ranking for the searches that matter in your area, and a database of past customers who renovate again and refer their neighbours. When enquiry flow demonstrably belongs to the brand rather than to the owner personally, the fear a buyer brings to this industry disappears, and the price reflects it.
Measures and quotes that don't need you
In custom product, the measure and the quote are where the money is made or lost, and in an owner run business they live in your head and your hands. Trained measure staff or contract checkers, quoting that runs through software with set margins rather than gut feel, and a documented process from consult to confirmed order shift the most critical skill in the business from you into the asset being sold.
Trade and designer relationships that transfer
Builder accounts, commercial fitout relationships and interior designers who specify you are the closest thing this industry has to recurring revenue. They smooth the retail cycle, they lower your blended cost per sale, and they are exactly what national groups and expanding trade buyers want to acquire. Get the arrangements documented, spread the relationships beyond the owner, and keep the service levels that won them.
Production and install capacity that stays
Whether you make in house or import made to order, and whether your installers are employed or subcontracted, the buyer needs to believe the product keeps getting made and fitted after settlement. Documented supplier agreements, a workroom or factory process that runs to standard without supervision, written installer arrangements at commercial rates, and quality accountability on every install all convert capability into transferable value.
Clean numbers that tell the margin story
Business and personal spending separated, deposits and work in progress accounted for properly, margin visible by product line, and a defensible set of add backs establishing the true earnings. Custom businesses have genuinely attractive margin stories to tell, but only clean books can tell them. A normalised earnings schedule you hand over on day one, reconciling to your quoting system and your bank, is worth real money in this sector.
A broker who understands this exact machine
Before broking, I held a General Manager role with a national e-commerce retailer of custom window furnishings, working across the measure, quote, make and install machine: the lead engine, the conversion rates, the remake battles, the supplier negotiations and the install quality that keeps reviews five star. Before that, I co founded and scaled a retail business across online and bricks and mortar channels to several million dollars a year in revenue, and sold it successfully.
That matters when your business goes to sale, because I can present your lead engine, your margin story and your trade relationships to buyers in their own language, and defend your price with substance rather than a spreadsheet. The approach goes directly to the buyers who want the territory: national groups and franchises, expanding trade players, and operators adding a product line. Each one is qualified before they cost you an afternoon.
Not in this sector?
I sell businesses in every industry. These nine are the ones I have run, built or worked in, which means I can talk to a buyer in their own language from the first meeting. That is an advantage where it applies, not a limit where it does not.
E-commerce & retailRan a national online window furnishings retailer, and co-founded and sold a toy business built to several million a year.
Transport & logisticsTwenty years around trucks, trailers and fleets, and what a financier looks at before your profit.
Earthmoving, plant & civilIndustrial auction and remarketing. Machine hours, condition and the difference between the two.
Construction & buildingThe QBCC licence question comes before the price question, every single time.
Mining services & supplyPrequalification status and safety record price straight into the multiple in this sector.
You are reading this oneWindow furnishings & interiorsRan one. Custom manufacture, measure and install, and where the revenue ceiling actually sits.
Toy, gift & hobby retailCo-founded one with my wife, built it across store and online, and sold it. I have sat on your side of this.
Turf farmsMy father in law built a turf farm and sold it to his competitors. A sector few brokers have been near.
OH&S consultancy & trainingCertificate IV in Training and Assessment, and safety training systems built from scratch. Including RTO risk.Nine published seller guides, and the one you are on is marked. Every industry outside the nine gets the same process, the same buyer research and the same discipline. View all seller guides.
Who wrote this, and why the remake rate is the first thing he asks for
Tony Pope holds Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence 4963575 and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers. This page is written from inside the industry. He spent two years as general manager of a global made to measure window furnishings retailer, selling custom blinds, shutters and curtains through a direct to consumer digital model, with 20 per cent year on year revenue growth. He has run measure, quote, make and install as a business rather than read about it. He led a full website redevelopment and ran national promotional campaigns, so he knows what a lead costs in this category and what happens to margin when a promotion is priced before the remake rate is understood. He owned governance, work health and safety compliance, risk frameworks and standard operating procedures, which is the unglamorous half of this industry and the half a buyer reads first.
That background is why this page opens on the two corded standards rather than on multiples. The distinction between the goods standard and the installation services standard is the point that gets missed by people who have never had to write the installer procedure themselves. Every figure on this page is traced to a primary source: the Federal Register of Legislation, the ACCC and Product Safety Australia, the QBCC, Queensland Legislation, WorkSafe Queensland and the ABS. The sources are listed above so you can check them yourself. Where a fact could not be verified against a primary source, this page says so rather than filling the gap, which is why you will find plain notes about Schedule 1 of the QBCC Regulation 2018, about the registration status of the 2010 goods standard and about the Queensland payroll tax rate.
Questions people ask
3 of the 24 answered in full on the questions page for this topic.
Do the corded blind safety rules apply to what I install, or only to what I sell?
Both, and they are two separate mandatory standards. The goods are covered by the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014. The installation service is covered by the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014, register ID F2014L00363.
What does the 2014 installation standard actually require at each job?
Four measurable things and two documentary things. Install so a loose cord cannot form a loop 220 mm or longer at less than 1,600 mm above floor level. Fix any cleat at least 1,600 mm above floor level. Ensure any cord guide fitted below 1,600 mm withstands 70 N applied in any direction for 10 seconds.
A buyer’s solicitor has asked for my installation certificates. Do they exist?
No. There is no installation certificate regime for corded internal window coverings. Neither the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014 nor the ACCC installation guide imposes a record-keeping obligation or a certificate obligation on the installer.
More questions window furnishings owners ask, all 24 of them.
Go deeper
The long form, where it belongs
The full detail is on the pages below, each on its own page.
Check it yourself12 primary sources
Primary sources, none of them affiliated with me and none of them endorsing this site. Where anything here differs from an official source, the official source is right.
The terms a buyer will test you on in a window furnishings sale10 definitions
Plain definitions of the words a buyer, a financier or a regulator will use. Where a term has a statutory anchor, it is named.
One contract under which the business both supplies the goods and performs the installation. It attracts Australian Consumer Law consumer guarantees on the goods and on the services. For corded internal window coverings it attracts both the 2010 goods standard and the Competition and Consumer (Corded Internal Window Coverings) Safety Standard 2014. It is also the trigger for the goods and services version of the mandatory warranty against defects wording.
The site attendance at which the installer takes final check measurements and confirms fabric, control side, stack direction, fixing substrate and clearances, converting an estimate into a firm price. In supply and install, the measurer carries the measurement risk. In supply only, the customer carries it.
The proportion of orders refabricated at the business’s own cost, expressed as a percentage of units or of revenue. It is the single most diagnostic operating metric in this industry because it captures measurement discipline, fabrication quality and supplier accuracy in one number. A buyer who is given twelve months of remake data by cause will price differently from a buyer who is told the number is low.
Goods fabricated to dimensions specific to one opening in one property, with no resale value if the order is wrong. It is not a legal category. Made to measure does not remove the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law, and it does not by itself create a right to forfeit a deposit on cancellation.
The two devices the 2014 installation standard recognises for securing a loose cord. A cleat used to secure a cord must be installed at least 1,600 mm above floor level. A cord guide installed below 1,600 mm must withstand 70 N applied in any direction for 10 seconds, roughly a 7 kg pull, and must keep the cord tensioned so no loop forms.
A contract caught by Division 1A of the Payroll Tax Act 1971 (Qld), under which payments to a nominally independent contractor are deemed to be taxable wages. Section 13A defines contract as an agreement, arrangement or undertaking, whether formal or informal and whether express or implied. Section 13B sets out the exclusions and the Commissioner can disregard those exclusions where satisfied the contract was designed to avoid payroll tax.
Fabrication means cutting, sewing, welding, routing or laminating raw material into a component. Assembly means combining bought-in finished components into a saleable unit. The distinction drives capital intensity, labour skill, insurance, work health and safety obligations and the multiple, because an assembly-only business is far easier for a competitor to replicate.
A credit account held by a builder, interior designer, property manager or shopfitter, usually at a discount to retail and on payment terms. Trade accounts are typically documented on a standard form contract, which places them inside the unfair contract terms regime that changed on 9 November 2023.
A scaled drawing produced by the fabricator showing exactly how a joinery or fitout item will be built and installed, submitted for approval before fabrication begins. Approval of the shop drawing is the usual contractual point at which measurement and buildability risk transfers from the fabricator to the client.
The elapsed time from order confirmation to goods being available for installation. It is driven by imported componentry such as slats, headrails, motors and hardware, and it is the main determinant of the working capital cycle and of how dependent the business is on customer deposits.
Ask what it is worth
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