More questions window furnishings owners ask

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.

This is the point that is misunderstood inside the industry more than any other. Suppliers who label their stock correctly assume they have discharged the obligation. They have not. The 2014 instrument is a safety standard for a service, and it binds the person performing the installation in a domestic dwelling.

The 2014 standard was signed on 20 March 2014, registered on 28 March 2014 and commenced on 1 January 2015. It has never been amended. The latest version on the Federal Register of Legislation is still the as-made version of 28 March 2014, which means the requirements you were told about in 2015 are the requirements that apply today.

Scope has one exclusion worth knowing. The 2014 standard applies to installation in a domestic dwelling and does not extend to caravans, mobile homes or boats. Commercial installation sits outside it, though the goods standard and the consumer guarantees still apply to what you supply.

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.

The 70 N test is roughly a 7 kg pull, and the cord guide must keep the cord tensioned so that no loop can form while that force is applied. A cord guide that holds the cord neatly but releases under load does not meet the standard, and it is the failure a buyer’s inspector finds on site.

The two documentary requirements are attaching a label to the corded window covering containing the name and contact details of the installer, and retaining all manufacturer warning labels and swing tags on the product. Removing a swing tag because the customer thinks it looks untidy is a breach.

Fixing method is prescribed as well. Use only screw fixings with correct embedment, use the manufacturer-provided holes and the specified number of fixings, and follow the manufacturer instructions. Nails, staples, tape and adhesives are not acceptable, and you must not fix into rotted, water-logged, burnt or brittle substrate.

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.

The only documentary obligation the standard places on you is physical and it lives on the product. Attach a label carrying the name and contact details of the installer, and leave the manufacturer warning labels and swing tags in place. That is the whole of it.

Buyers and their lawyers frequently assume a certificate regime exists, usually by analogy with electrical or plumbing compliance certificates. Answer that request in writing with the correct position rather than apologising for a file you were never required to keep. A seller who can explain the regime accurately is read as a seller who understands it.

Keeping records anyway is still the smarter commercial position. A job file that records the fixing substrate, the control type, the cleat height and a photograph of the installed product is not required by the standard, but it is the cheapest way to answer a warranty claim two years after settlement.

It depends on the value of the work. Individuals and companies must hold a QBCC licence to carry out or contract for building work valued over $3,300. Below that figure, no licence is required for general building work. A single-room measure, supply and install job for blinds or curtains commonly sits under the threshold.

A whole-house shutter contract, an external awning contract or a custom joinery fitout will routinely exceed $3,300, and at that point the licensing question is live rather than theoretical. Value the job the way the QBCC does, on the total contract price for the work, not on the labour component alone.

There is a real gap in the public answer here and it is worth stating plainly. The legal exclusions from building work sit in section 5(1) of the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Regulation 2018, SL 2018 No. 138, by reference to Schedule 1. Whether Schedule 1 contains a specific exclusion for installing blinds, curtains, shutters, awnings or window furnishings could not be confirmed either way from the primary source when this page was researched in August 2026.

Do not treat that as a reason to relax. Treat it as a question to put to the QBCC in writing, in your own name, describing the actual work you perform and its typical contract values. A written answer from the regulator is a due diligence asset. An assumption held for fifteen years is not.

Four classes matter in this industry, and there is no separate commercial fitout class. Cabinet making covers installing, refurbishing, restoring or repairing kitchen, bathroom, laundry and other fitted cabinets and fitments on-site. Joinery is a separate trade class.

Shopfitting, as a trade class, is broader than the name suggests. It covers setting out, fabricating and assembling cabinets, showcases, wall units, counters and work stations, plus shopfronts, commercial entries, bulkheads and component fittings. It also picks up framing, internal linings, stairs, joinery components, door and window frames, finishes, glass cutting and installation, and aluminium fabrication.

Above the trade class sits builder restricted to shopfitting, which is the builder-level class for the same scope. Commercial fitout in Queensland is licensed through shopfitting or through builder restricted to shopfitting, not through a class of its own.

One provision saves a lot of arguments. Section 7(2) of the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Regulation 2018 permits a licensee to carry out incidental work of another class with a total value of $3,300 or less. If your business holds one class and routinely performs a small amount of another, that section is the one to read before a buyer’s solicitor reads it for you.

There is no general cap under the Australian Consumer Law. In Queensland, where the job is a regulated domestic building contract, the QBCC caps apply and they are strict. For a level 1 renovation, extension and repair contract from $3,301 to $19,999, the maximum deposit is 10 per cent of the total contract price.

For a level 2 contract of $20,000 and over, the maximum deposit is 5 per cent of the total contract price. Where the value of off-site work exceeds half the contract price, the maximum deposit rises to 20 per cent for either level. The homeowner also has a cooling off period of 5 business days.

That 20 per cent off-site rule is the provision that lets a custom shutter, curtain or joinery business fund fabrication before installation begins. It is not automatic. It depends on the off-site component genuinely exceeding 50 per cent of the contract price and on the contract being drafted to attract it.

A buyer assessing working capital will want to know two things. Whether your business relies on the 20 per cent rule to fund production, and whether your contracts are actually drafted to attract it. A business taking 40 per cent deposits on regulated domestic building contracts has a compliance problem and a working capital problem at the same time.

Possibly, and the risk changed materially on 9 November 2023. From that date, proposing, using or relying on an unfair term in a standard form contract is banned and penalties apply. Before that date, an unfair term was voidable. Now it is an offence with a penalty attached.

A standard form contract is a pre-written contract used for all customers on a take it or leave it basis. A window furnishings business typically uses a single order form for every retail customer and a single trade application for every trade account. Both are standard form contracts.

Three exposures recur in this industry. Forfeit-the-whole-deposit on cancellation, unilateral variation of price after the measure, and a blanket exclusion of liability for remake. Each is the kind of term a court would examine, and each appears in order forms drafted long before November 2023.

Small business protection now reaches further than it did. From 9 November 2023 the thresholds are fewer than 100 employees, or less than $10 million annual turnover, which replaced the earlier tests. That means many of your trade accounts are protected contracts, not just your retail customers.

Check which version you are using. A supply and install business needs the goods and services version of the mandatory warranty against defects text, which applies to warranties given after 9 June 2019. A goods-only version will not cover you, because your installation is a service.

The required wording is: “Our goods and services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. For major failures with the service, you are entitled: to cancel your service contract with us; and to a refund for the unused portion, or to compensation for its reduced value.”

The enabling provisions are sections 102 and 103 of the Australian Consumer Law, which is Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. The current compilation is C2026C00323, dated 1 July 2026. The specific regulation number that prescribes the text could not be verified from a primary source when this page was researched, so it is not stated here.

This is a cheap fix and an expensive omission. Updating the warranty document costs an afternoon. Explaining to a buyer why every warranty you have issued since 2019 carries the wrong statutory text costs a price adjustment.

There is no fixed expiry. The ACCC assesses the duration of a consumer guarantee contextually, against how long a similar product would normally be expected to last, judged on price, description and durability. The warranty period you nominated does not set the limit.

For a made to measure product, the tail runs for as long as a reasonable consumer would expect that product to last. A $4,000 plantation shutter installation carries a longer expectation than a $180 roller blind. The ACCC does not carve out custom-made goods from the consumer guarantees, and being fabricated to one opening does not shorten the tail.

Two sets of guarantees apply to a supply and install business. On goods: acceptable quality, fitness for a disclosed purpose, matching description, matching sample, extra promises honoured, spare parts and repairs available for a reasonable time, and clear title. On services: due care and skill, fitness for the stated purpose, and supply within a reasonable time.

Where the work is a regulated domestic building contract in Queensland, a separate statutory warranty tail applies on top. It runs 6 years for a breach resulting in a structural defect, or 1 year in any other case, from completion, cessation or termination.

You could, and this is the liability found last in a sale of an installation business. The relevant contract provisions in Division 1A of the Payroll Tax Act 1971 (Qld), sections 13A to 13F, can deem payments to nominally independent subcontract installers to be taxable wages.

Section 13A defines contract as an agreement, arrangement or undertaking, whether formal or informal and whether express or implied. Having no written agreement with your installers does not take you outside the provisions. It only makes the position harder to evidence.

Section 13B sets out the exclusions and they are narrower than the industry assumes. They cover contracts of service, services ancillary to the supply of goods, services of a kind not ordinarily required and not performed for more than 180 days in a year, services performed for under 90 days, services by a person who ordinarily performs such services for the public generally, and work performed by the contractor’s own employees.

An installer network of five to fifteen ABN holders working almost exclusively for one business, for more than 90 days a year, who do not offer services to the public generally, is unlikely to fall inside those exclusions. Registration is required once Australian taxable wages exceed $25,000 a week. The Queensland payroll tax rate and annual threshold could not be verified from the Queensland Revenue Office when this page was researched in August 2026, so no rate is stated here.

Only if the claim survives the tests the ACCC applies. “Made in” a country means the last substantial step in the making of the product happened in that country. “Product of” a country means all the main components come from that country and almost all processing occurred there.

Assembling imported slats, headrails, brackets, chains and motors into a finished blind in an Australian workroom may or may not be the last substantial step, and the answer depends on what the assembly actually involves. Cutting to size, fabricating and sewing is a different claim from screwing purchased components together.

The exposure survives the sale in an uncomfortable way. If the marketing is misleading, the buyer inherits the branding, the website and the showroom signage, and continues the conduct. That is why an experienced buyer asks for the bill of materials and the country of origin of the main components before agreeing to keep the brand.

Handle it before going to market. Map the range by origin, decide which lines can carry an origin claim and which cannot, and change the marketing on the lines that cannot. Doing that yourself is a tidy operational decision. Being asked to do it in due diligence is a discount.

Working at heights documentation, first and specifically. Falls are managed under Part 4.4 of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld), and this is a common gap in a small installer’s system because the work looks domestic and low risk until someone is on a ladder fitting an external awning.

Two sections mark the boundary. Section 306C applies to falls under 3 m in housing construction, under 2 m in other construction work, and any roof work at a slope not exceeding 26 degrees. Section 306D applies to falls over 3 m in housing construction, over 2 m in other construction work, and roof work over 26 degrees.

The supporting document is the Managing the risk of falls at workplaces Code of Practice 2021, published by WorkSafe Queensland. A safe work method statement that names the sections, sets out the control for each height band and is signed by the installers is what a buyer is looking for. A laminated generic policy is not.

Awning installation, external shutter installation and high-window work are where this bites. If your business does that work and your documentation does not mention it, fix the documentation before you list. It is a fortnight of work and it removes a warranty request from the contract.

You have an exposure that is worth managing, because drilling into window reveals, eaves, soffits and wet area linings is precisely the activity that disturbs bonded asbestos. Track, pelmet, shutter and awning fixings all involve exactly that.

The date to work from is 31 December 1989. Buildings constructed after that date do not automatically require an asbestos register unless asbestos has been identified. Buildings from before 1990 warrant identification before you drill or fix into a suspect material.

Removal licensing turns on a 10 square metre threshold in Queensland. An installer removing a small section of lining to make a fixing is a very different activity from a licensed removal job, but the distinction has to be understood by the person on site, not just by the owner.

What a buyer wants to see is a documented process: a pre-1990 flag on the job sheet, an instruction to stop and check before drilling into suspect material, and a record of what happened when the flag was raised. It costs nothing to build and it answers a question that would otherwise become a warranty.

Less than you think until consent is obtained. Distribution and dealership agreements with fabric houses, hardware suppliers and shutter manufacturers commonly contain territory exclusivity, minimum purchase volumes and change of control clauses. This is a commercial due diligence point rather than a regulatory one.

Exclusivity is often the single most valuable intangible in a window furnishings business. It is also the one that can evaporate at settlement. If the agreement terminates on a change of control, or requires the supplier’s written consent, the exclusivity is not an asset you can price into the sale until that consent is in hand.

Read every supplier agreement before you set a price, and specifically look for the change of control clause, the territory definition, the minimum volume commitment and the termination notice period. If any agreement is undocumented and runs on habit, that is worth knowing too, because habit does not transfer.

Approaching a supplier for consent is a confidentiality decision as much as a commercial one. Sequence it. Get the buyer under a confidentiality agreement and past the first stage of diligence before the supplier is approached, and have the request come with the buyer’s credentials attached rather than as an open question.

Because it is the one number that tells a buyer whether the business works. Remake rate is the proportion of orders refabricated at your own cost, as a percentage of units or of revenue, and it captures measurement discipline, fabrication quality and supplier accuracy in one figure.

It flows straight to gross margin, and it does so invisibly. A remake absorbs the material, the workroom hours, a second installation visit and the freight, and none of that appears as a line item called remakes in a standard profit and loss. It sits inside cost of goods sold, which is why margin can look soft with no obvious cause.

Report it by cause, not as a single number. Measurement error, fabrication error, supplier error, customer change of mind and damage in transit are five different problems with five different fixes, and a buyer who sees the breakdown can price the fixable portion.

Twelve months of remake data by cause, by installer and by product type is one of the most persuasive documents you can hand a buyer in this industry. It is also the document that tells you, before anyone else asks, whether the business depends on one or two people who never make a mistake.

Nothing happens automatically, and this is the most common cash surprise in a window furnishings settlement. Deposits taken before settlement are money you have received for work the buyer will perform, and unless the contract deals with them, you keep the cash and the buyer keeps the obligation.

Build the schedule before you go to market. For each open order, list the customer, the product, the contract price, the deposit taken, the order status with the supplier or the workroom, the expected installation window and whether any part of it is a regulated domestic building contract.

Then agree the mechanism. The common outcome is an adjustment at settlement, where deposits held on incomplete orders are credited to the buyer and any work in progress is valued and paid for. Whichever way it falls, it is a schedule to the contract, not a conversation on settlement day.

Lead time is what makes this material. A business with a six to ten week lead time on imported componentry can be carrying two months of orders at any moment. That is a real number, it belongs in the contract, and quantifying it early stops it becoming a late renegotiation.

It depends entirely on whether your revenue is weighted to new build or to retrofit, and the two series moved in opposite directions in the most recent data. Retrofit is the better half of the cycle as at August 2026.

On the new build side, the ABS Building Activity, Australia release for the March quarter 2026, published 8 July 2026, recorded total dwellings commenced at 48,012 seasonally adjusted, down 11.2 per cent, and total dwellings completed at 43,816, down 0.4 per cent. Queensland recorded 10,861 dwellings commenced and 8,944 completed. Completions are what drive new build window furnishings demand, and they are flat.

On the retrofit side, the value of alterations and additions to residential building reached $3,976.2 million in chain volume measures, up 4.1 per cent on the December quarter. That is the series this industry tracks most closely, because alterations and additions drive replacement and re-fit work.

Approvals give the forward view. The ABS Building Approvals, Australia release for June 2026, published 30 July 2026, recorded 18,328 total dwelling units approved seasonally adjusted, up 7.2 per cent, with private sector dwellings excluding houses up 17.8 per cent to 7,138 and Queensland recording 4,841 units. If your work is weighted to apartments, that mix shift matters more to you than the headline.

The recall risk in this category has recently been electrical and motorisation, not cord strangulation. That is a distinction worth understanding, because the enforcement risk and the recall risk sit in different places.

Three recalls illustrate the pattern. A remote control unit for Nordic series motorised window awnings, model AC136-05Bi-CA, was recalled on 24 April 2026. SIMU DMI6 Hz motors operating roller shutters, blinds and awnings were recalled on 26 September 2023. CW radio remote controls and transmitters for roller shutters, blinds and awnings were recalled on 5 January 2023. All three are motor or remote control faults.

The practical consequence is that motorisation changes your supplier risk profile. If your business has moved from manual to motorised product over the last five years, your recall exposure now sits with electrical componentry suppliers you may never have assessed for that risk.

A buyer will search the Product Safety Australia recalls register against your supplier names and your own brand names. Doing that search yourself before you list, and knowing what is on the register, is half an hour of work and removes an unpleasant surprise from the diligence process.

Typically as a multiple of adjusted earnings, with the multiple moving on everything in this guide: the lead engine, trade relationships, margin discipline, remake rates and owner dependence. Stock and showroom fittings are handled in the structure of the deal. A confidential market appraisal establishes the likely selling price for your specific business, supported by comparable sales and a defensible appraisal methodology.

It is normally assigned to the buyer with the landlord's consent, which makes remaining tenure and terms part of the deal. A showroom on a short lease with no options is worth fixing before market, because buyers and their financiers want security in the location your brand is known for.

That is negotiated and documented in the sale contract, and there are several workable structures depending on the situation. What makes it a small conversation instead of a price fight is a clean, documented claims history, which is exactly why the claims register belongs in your preparation window.

Not if it is documented. Subcontract installers are standard in this industry and give the buyer flexible capacity. Buyers want written agreements at commercial rates, compliant engagement, accountability for install quality, and key installers likely to continue after settlement. Handshake arrangements get priced as risk, so paper them well before market.

Not through a properly run process. It is presented by its territory, its product mix and its numbers, with no trading name, no showroom address and no trade account list. Every enquiry signs a confidentiality agreement and is qualified before anything identifying is released, and the detail a competitor would want comes last. Confidentiality is not a courtesy in this process, it is the process.

Now, whatever your timeline. If your exit is years away, the appraisal is what stops the next few years being drift. If it is closer, you may be able to fast track, and businesses with strong brands, trade accounts, exclusive lines or e-commerce capability are saleable to strategic buyers today.