Hiring
Hiring a Chairish assistant: what the role really involves
Chairish runs on negotiation — more than half of sales involve offers — so the assistant you need is half cataloguer, half dealmaker. The real shape of the role, the vetting that predicts success, and where it sits beside 1stDibs and Pamono staffing.
Chairish staffing has a specific shape because Chairish selling has a specific culture: more than half of purchases involve the Make an Offer flow, offers run on a 72-hour clock, and the sellers who win treat negotiation speed as a listing feature. That makes the role two jobs wearing one title — the cataloguer who builds honest vintage listings, and the dealmaker who answers a 40%-off opening offer inside an hour with a counter that lands. Candidates reliably come in one flavour; the vetting problem is testing for the other half.
We published the platform's full mechanics in the complete Chairish guide and the sister role for 1stDibs; this is the Chairish-specific hiring view — sharpened by the fact that Chairish listings now cross-publish to Pamono, which quietly added Europe to the job description.
Key takeaways
- —The role is cataloguer plus dealmaker: honest one-of-a-kind listings on one side, fast structured offer-handling on the other — most candidates are strong at exactly one
- —Offer response speed is a conversion lever: a 72-hour window treated as a two-hour target during business hours measurably outsells the weekend reply
- —Pricing is part of the job: list prices need deliberate negotiation headroom above a written walk-away — an assistant without pricing rules negotiates your margin away politely
- —Consignment logistics and enquiry handling are the hidden half of the workload on an active shop
- —The Pamono cross-publish extends the desk to European buyers: metric fluency and time-zone-aware response habits joined the role quietly
What the work actually is
- —Building listings to the vintage standard: researched attribution, honest condition reports, complete dimensions and photography that survives curation
- —Working the offer queue: evaluating each offer against the piece's written floor, countering with reasons, and closing inside the window
- —Price maintenance: monitoring aging listings, applying the markdown cadence, and keeping negotiation headroom intact after markdowns
- —Enquiry handling that sells: answering dimension, condition and shipping questions with the specificity design buyers expect
- —Logistics coordination: shipping quotes for furniture-class pieces, consignment paperwork where inventory is consigned, and delivery follow-through
- —Cross-platform hygiene: the same piece consistent everywhere it lists, and de-listed everywhere the moment it sells anywhere
The negotiation half, specifically
Offer-handling is where a Chairish assistant makes or loses their salary, and it runs on rules rather than nerve. Every piece carries a written walk-away number set at pricing time; the assistant's authority is the band above it — accept fast at the top, counter with a reason in the middle ('the restoration history is documented', 'this size is the scarce one'), decline politely below with the door left open. Countering with reasons matters commercially: it converts better than a bare number, and it teaches the buyer the price has structure. What the rules prevent is the two amateur endings — the assistant who accepts everything to keep velocity, and the one who declines everything to protect a price nobody authorised them to defend.
How to vet a candidate
- —Set a listing test on one real piece — attribution hedging, condition specificity and measurement discipline show immediately
- —Then a negotiation test: three written offer scenarios against a stated floor — you are grading speed, arithmetic, and whether counters carry reasons
- —Ask how they would price a piece for Chairish versus 1stDibs; the answer should include headroom, not just level
- —Ask what they do in the first hour after an offer arrives — the strong answer is a sequence with a clock on it
- —Ask for a story of a negotiation they lost correctly: walking away at the floor is a skill, and people who have it tell the story well
One assistant, or a desk
One strong assistant holds a boutique Chairish shop: steady intake, a manageable offer queue, consignment paperwork in single digits. The role splits under the same pressures as the rest of the one-of-a-kind tier — catalog intake at volume, offer traffic that punishes queueing, and now a European enquiry stream arriving on Berlin time. At that point cataloguing, negotiation and logistics become a desk with named ownership and cover, rather than one person's inbox; that structure is the version we operate inside our rug-brand engagement, where Chairish runs beside 1stDibs, Pamono and the volume channels from one canonical catalog.
Hire for both halves — the cataloguer's honesty and the dealmaker's clock — give them written floors and offer bands so speed never costs margin, and test with a real piece and three real offers before anyone touches the live shop.
Frequently asked questions
Two jobs in one: building researched, honestly-conditioned listings for one-of-a-kind inventory, and working the Make an Offer queue — evaluating offers against written floors, countering with reasons, and closing inside the 72-hour window. Around the edges: enquiry handling, markdown cadence, consignment paperwork and furniture-class shipping coordination.
The window is 72 hours; the working target should be within business hours of arrival — ideally under two. Offer-driven buyers are comparison shopping in real time, and response speed converts measurably. The prerequisite is pricing rules: written walk-away floors and authority bands, so fast never means unauthorised.
Same cataloguing foundation, different commercial temperament: 1stDibs work concentrates on deep provenance, editorial standards and considered trade enquiries; Chairish work adds a rapid negotiation engine and broader consignment logistics. The strongest one-of-a-kind operations staff the two as siblings sharing one canonical catalog.
Listing: one real piece from your inventory, photos and measurements supplied, full listing back — grade the attribution hedging and condition specificity. Negotiation: three written offers against a stated floor — a lowball, a mid-band offer, and one just under the floor — graded on speed, arithmetic, reasoned counters and the willingness to decline the last one politely.