Régisseur — Vintage

The role in one line You own every vintage and second-hand piece we buy — physically and on paper — from arrival to the moment it reaches a client. You document it, you get it into sellable condition, and you make sure the catalogue has everything it needs. Responsibilities Intake, condition and documentation Receive incoming pieces; check against purchase order and flag discrepancies before payment. Write the condition report with photographs before any cleaning or intervention. This is the reference point for every later dispute. Measure every piece on the actual object. Supplier sheets frequently carry packaging rather than product dimensions and are not to be trusted. Capture and preserve labels, stamps, marks and certificates, and record attribution at the correct level of certainty (attributed to, in the style of). One unique ID per piece, one known location at all times. Maintain stock accuracy through cycle counts. Catalogue data — completeness is yours Make sure every piece has the full set of information the catalogue needs: dimensions, materials, finishes, designer and maker, period, variant and configuration details. Find and fill the gaps. Where a field is missing, wrong or inherited from a bad source, you research it or establish it from the object. Never guess. Our listing copy is generated by AI tooling from the data you supply, and it will render a plausible guess as confident, polished prose. A speculative attribution entered as fact becomes a published false claim on a premium piece. Record what is known, what is attributed, and what is unknown, and keep those distinct. You are not writing the listing copy. Your job is that the tooling has accurate, complete inputs, because the output is only as good as what you hand it. Cleaning and refurbishment — hands-on, and the priority Clean, wax, polish, touch up, tighten, re-glue, replace fittings: the work that takes a piece from as-bought to sellable, beyond what the warehouse team can do at intake. Judge how far to intervene within the limits agreed with the Quality Specialist. Over-restoration destroys value — stripping an original finish or polishing out patina can cost more than the damage it corrects. Knowing where to stop matters as much as the work itself, and edge cases go to him rather than being decided at the bench. Own the triage decision: what you do yourself, and what goes to our established restorers. They also work on site with us, so coordinating and briefing them on the backlog is part of the job. Complicated cases stay with them. Track spend per piece and escalate when restoration cost threatens the economics. Maintain the on-site work area and its consumables. Quality control — uphold it on the floor QC sits with the warehouse team operationally and stays there. The Quality Specialist sets the criteria. You are the person on the floor who makes sure they are met: ongoing training, spot-checks, correcting drift, and stepping in directly on pieces that warrant it. Authority to reject or stop work where handling, packing or storage puts a piece at risk. Flag where a criterion is unworkable in practice, with the evidence, so the Quality Specialist can revise it. Photography — same model Run our automated studio (Orbitvu Furniture Studio) day to day: applying the right template to each subcategory, keeping output consistent across hundreds of items, and proposing template additions where a new subcategory needs one. Train the warehouse team to shoot to the agreed standard on an ongoing basis, and shoot yourself where a piece needs it. Own throughput so photography stops being a bottleneck. QC output before it reaches the catalogue: correct piece, correct variant, defects visible where they should be. Returns Assess returns, re-grade, decide refurbish / re-list / write off, and feed wear data back so we buy better. Warehouse floor — minor, but valued (c.10% of the role) This is not a logistics role. The operator's team continues to raise day-to-day operational issues with our Ops team, not with you. But you are in the building every day, which makes you a useful extra pair of eyes and ears. Where you add value: Packaging. Our pieces must be packed strictly to standard. Damage in transit is usually a packing failure, and you're the best-placed person to catch it before something ships. Storage and layout. Check that our stock is organised safely — clear of forklift traffic, not stacked in ways that cause damage, reachable without dragging pieces past one another. Handling standards. Hold the operator's floor team to our standards for pieces that generic warehouse handling isn't adequate for, with the authority to stop work that puts a piece at risk. Support and escalation. Step in where extra support is genuinely needed, and flag recurring problems with evidence to Ops and the Quality Specialist rather than absorbing them. Priority rule. Refurbishment throughput and documentation come first. Roughly 90% of your time sits in the core work above; when the operator is under volume pressure, our standards don't drop to absorb it. New furniture — secondary. Routine goods-in and picking stays with the operator. You own the exceptions: damaged or wrong deliveries, brand quality disputes, assembly and configuration checks, dimension corrections. And you own any new item once it returns from a client, because at that point it's a graded asset in the same pipeline as everything else. Priority rule. Refurbishment throughput and documentation come first. When the operator is under volume pressure, our standards don't drop to absorb it. Profile Essential: 5–10 years with physical custody of design, vintage or antique furniture, ideally at the higher end of the market: restoration workshop, high-end dealer, design gallery, auction house, or specialist art logistics. We need someone who arrives already working to a premium standard. Hands-on cleaning and minor refurbishment skill. Confident with wood finishes, waxing, small repairs and hardware. Can point to pieces they've brought back to sellable condition themselves. Sound judgement on how far to go — understands that patina and original finish carry value. Demonstrable condition-reporting practice, and materials literacy: solid vs veneer, upholstery construction, finishes, cosmetic vs structural damage. Real knowledge of 20th-century design — the major editors and makers, and the ability to spot a re-edition presented as period. Intellectual honesty about attribution. Comfortable saying a piece is unattributed, and disciplined about the line between documented, attributed and guessed. Rigorous about product data. Treats a missing or wrong field as a problem to solve, not admin. Comfortable working inside someone else's framework. Applies the Quality Specialist's standards rather than writing their own, and improves them through evidence rather than override. This relationship is central to the role. Able to train and coach others on those standards, including a team they don't manage. A recurring part of the job rather than the bulk of it. Physically capable of bench and warehouse work. Welcome: Formal training as ébéniste, upholsterer, or in furniture conservation. Rental, hire or event stock experience — the same object through repeated cycles. Product photography at volume, automated or otherwise. Our system is quick to learn, so this is a plus rather than a requirement. PIM or catalogue data experience. Brocante, vide-grenier or auction trade background. Recruitment process Screening call — Fabien, Head of TA. Filters on the essentials above (custody experience, hands-on skill, attribution discipline) and covers the must-ask screening questions. 2nd round — Markus, Head of Product. Assesses fit against the role's technical and quality-judgement dimensions. 3rd round — Shari, Head of Revenue. Business-context and cross-functional fit. Final, on-site — before any offer. In-person meeting to align on everything ahead of an offer being made; not a scored interview stage, but a mutual-fit checkpoint.