Line Sheets for Furniture, Outdoor and Lighting Importers

What is a line sheet in wholesale?

A line sheet is the document a buyer uses to choose products and write an order. The format started in fashion. It fits furniture and lighting just as well, because dealers buy by item number.

• Dealers and store buyers pick items and write orders from it.
• Your reps carry it into stores and send it after calls.
• Your team hands it out during market week at High Point or Las Vegas Market, and puts it in every new dealer packet.

Line sheet example: outdoor furniture

A furniture line sheet is a grid with one row per item: photo, SKU, size, finish, assembly, CBM, minimum order and container quantity. The header carries the brand, collection, season, date and version, so anyone with an old copy can tell.

Here is part of one from Northwind Outdoor, a fictional brand. The specs are made up.

Northwind Outdoor (fictional) · Harbor Collection · Line Sheet · 2027 Season · Version 3 · Updated Oct. 1, 2026

Frame: powder-coated aluminum, Charcoal · Cushions: solution-dyed acrylic, Sand · Made in Vietnam · Warranty: 2-year residential / 1-year commercial · Rep: name, phone, email

Photos print on each row. What to notice:

1. Shared facts sit in the header. Finish, origin and warranty are the same across Harbor. If finishes vary, give finish its own column.
2. One unit for sizes. Inches or centimeters, never both. CBM stays in cubic meters because ocean freight is booked that way.
3. Trade terms. CBM is the space one item fills. MOQ is the minimum order quantity. 40' HC qty is how many fit in a 40-foot high-cube container. Container buyers read these first. A store ordering ten chairs by truck reads carton size and weight.
4. What this sample is missing: carton size and weight, case pack and lead time. Many real sheets skip them, and dealers email to ask.
5. There is no price column. That is on purpose.

What to include on a furniture, outdoor or lighting line sheet

Furniture and lighting dealers check sizes, cartons, CBM, assembly, finishes, minimums, freight method, warranty, lead time and who to call. Price, terms and stock go on dealer-only lists.

Bulky goods need more than a fashion sheet: the dealer has to get every piece to a customer's living room.

Why price stays off the public sheet. A line sheet travels. Reps forward it and dealers pass it to designers, so you cannot control who ends up holding it. Prices also change more often than specs. Put them on a dated dealer price sheet for approved accounts, and your line sheet can stay public all season.

Line sheet vs catalog vs price list vs spec sheet

A line sheet is for ordering from one collection. A catalog shows the whole line. A dealer price sheet carries wholesale prices and terms. A spec or tear sheet covers one product in full detail for designers and hospitality buyers. A lookbook sells the look with room scenes.

How to make a line sheet from your product spreadsheet

Build the sheet from the spreadsheet you already keep. The spreadsheet is the record, and the PDF is a printout of it.

1. Pick one master spreadsheet, one row per SKU. A header row you can copy: SKU, Item, Collection, Finish, Fabric, Item W x D x H, Item weight, Carton L x W x H, Carton weight, CBM, Case pack, Assembly, MOQ, 40' HC qty, Origin, Warranty, Ship method, Lead time, Photo file.
2. Clean the data. One name per finish, so "Charcoal" is never "Char" two rows down. No blank size or carton cells.
3. Keep price in a separate tab or file, so it cannot land on the sheet by mistake.
4. Name photos by SKU, like NW-HB-110.jpg. Shoot every item at the same angle on a plain background.
5. Lay out the sheet.
   • Excel or Google Sheets: make a print tab with only the line-sheet columns and photos, set it to landscape and export to PDF.
   • Canva: Bulk Create (paid plans) makes one page per spreadsheet row. For a four-up page, copy your sheet so each row holds four products (Name 1, SKU 1, Photo 1, Name 2 and so on).
   • InDesign: Data Merge fills a layout from your spreadsheet and can place photos by file name.
6. Add the header and footer: brand, collection, season, date, version, rep contact and website.
7. Proof, then export with a clear name like Harbor-Line-Sheet-2026-10.pdf. Check carton sizes and CBM against the spreadsheet line by line. Dealers book freight with those numbers.

Or generate it from your catalog. The same spreadsheet can feed a full product catalog. Some catalog websites and product-data systems build the PDF straight from that data. You skip copy-and-paste errors and give up some design freedom.

Why line sheets go out of date, and the fix

A line sheet goes stale the moment a product changes and nobody rebuilds the PDF. The fix is mostly a habit.

How it happens:

• Someone fixes a typo in the PDF but not the spreadsheet, and the typo returns next season.
• The factory changes a cushion color or a carton size, and the sheet still shows the old one.
• A rep keeps sending last spring's PDF from a sent folder.

How to stop it:

• One master spreadsheet. Every change starts there.
• A date and version on every page.
• Rebuild from the spreadsheet. Never edit the PDF directly.
• Send a link or a fresh PDF, never an old attachment.
• Retire old files. Take them off shared drives and your website, and tell reps which version is current.

Where RackFold fits. We load your product spreadsheet into a catalog website, which becomes your master copy. You can export it to Excel any time. RackFold builds a PDF for every collection from the catalog, with photos, item numbers, sizes and finishes. When you change a product in the catalog or import an updated spreadsheet, that collection's PDF rebuilds itself within a couple of minutes. The catalog has no price field, so those PDFs carry no prices. They are a plain download, not behind a lead form. Sheets you design yourself and flyers from RackFold's brochure tool are snapshots, so date and version those.

How to share a line sheet: PDF, link or form

Use a link in email, and a PDF for anything that must work offline or on paper.

• PDF. Works at market when the Wi-Fi is weak and prints cleanly. Every copy is frozen the day it is sent.
• Link. If you replace the file at the same web address, everyone with the link sees the current version.
• File size. Under about 5 MB for email, with photos at about 150 dpi. Keep a 300 dpi file for print.
• Behind a short form. On your website, ask for name, company and email, then deliver the file right away. Each form fill is a name to follow up with after market. Send current dealers the direct link so they skip the form.