It’s often said that trust is the most important part of a relationship. That adage is true for professional relationships, too — especially between design firms and their suppliers.

When we explain our process to new clients, we pride ourselves on our svelteness. That is, the fact that we’re staffed entirely by designers. We don’t print, code, or fabricate anything. When we need someone to do that for us, we hire the best-matched partner we can find for that project. That arrangement gives us a lot of flexibility and allows us to focus on the part that we love (and are best at).

The unfortunate trade-off is that we’re often at the mercy of our suppliers. Our clients are always aware when a supplier is involved, but in the end, the project is Oxide’s alone. When a supplier misses a deadline or makes a mistake, that’s egg on our face. Oxide must be evaluated by the company we keep; the vendors we bring to the table should be seen as an extension of us. The client can hold us responsible (they usually do) — and that’s OK with us.

With the right supplier collaboration, the process works perfectly. But when we align ourselves with someone who ends up not respecting the supply chain (all the way to the end client), bad things happen. In eight years of business, our very darkest moments have come not at the hands of clients, but due to a poor supplier choice.

Whether they acknowledge it or not, our supplier’s decisions are our decisions. The distance we provide between clients and suppliers is sometimes interpreted as an equal distance from accountability — which is not OK.

Suppliers fill an absolutely essential role for us, but they can forget that Oxide is also providing a service: we’re entrusting our clients (our most important asset) with them.