If you've ever ordered Simonis cloth and had it show up wrong—wrong color, wrong size, or worse, the wrong product entirely—you know that sinking feeling. I sure do. Over the past seven years handling B2B orders for billiard tables, I've personally made (and documented) eight significant mistakes, totaling roughly $5,200 in wasted budget. That's the kind of tuition you don't forget.
This article isn't about Simonis 860 Tournament Blue being great (it is). It's about the stuff that gets lost between saying “I need Simonis cloth” and getting the right roll on your dock. Trust me on this one—getting it right the first time is cheaper and faster for everyone.
The Surface Problem: Wrong Cloth, Wrong Cost
A client called me in a panic. They'd just received a 10-piece order of Simonis pool felt. Every single roll was 760 cloth. The spec sheet? It called for 860 Tournament Blue. The difference in cost? About $45 per piece. And that doesn't include the delay—the tournament was in three weeks.
I said, “We ordered 860.” They heard, “Standard Simonis is fine.” We both meant different things. Result: a $1,200 order that was basically a redo, plus a 1-week production delay. That's the surface problem—the one you think you're solving by double-checking the P.O.
But here's the thing: that order had been checked. Twice. By two different people. How did we still get it wrong?
The Deeper Cause: We Were Speaking Different Languages
The real problem wasn't the order. It was that my team and the supplier's team used the same words but meant different things. We said “Simonis cloth.” They heard “whatever is standard.” We said “Tournament Blue.” They heard “any blue cloth.” We thought the spec was obvious because we lived and breathed it every day.
The third time this happened (yes, the third—I'm slow to learn), I finally created a formal verification step. Should have done it after the first time.
Here's what I mean: in our industry, “Simonis 860” is a specific product code. But if someone on the order desk hasn't memorized the entire catalog—or if they've been taught that 760 is the default—you get mismatches. We didn't have a formal process for confirming exact product codes. Cost us when the entire order arrived wrong.
The Hidden Costs of Misspecification
A wrong cloth order doesn't just cost the product. It costs:
- Expedited shipping to fix the error: $150–$300 depending on distance.
- Labor time for re-installation: 2-4 hours per table at $50–$100/hour.
- Customer trust: You can't put a price on that, but I guarantee it's higher than the re-shipment cost.
- Demo time: If the wrong cloth is already installed (which happened to me once), you have to strip it. That's $200 in wasted cloth plus labor.
On a $3,200 order where every single item had the wrong color, the total cost of the mistake was $4,750 after reorder and rush shipping. That's a 48% premium over the original cost—just because we didn't verify the exact product code.
The Real Cost: Not Just Money
That $4,750 mistake was bad. But the worst part was the embarrassment. I had approved the order, checked the spec, and still got it wrong. The client found the error when the cloth arrived and didn't match the sample they'd kept. They called me, not to yell, but to ask a simple question: “Why did this happen?”
I didn't have a good answer. I said something about a communication gap. But what I really learned was that we'd skipped a verification step. We'd assumed the supplier would catch our mistake. We'd assumed the spec was clear. We'd assumed the wrong thing.
In September 2022, a similar mistake cost a colleague $890 in redo plus a 1-week delay. He'd ordered Simonis 760 for a table that needed 860—but the spec sheet said “standard cloth.” The result: a scratched playing surface after two weeks of use, and a very unhappy customer.
After the third rejection in Q1 2024, I created our pre-check list. We've caught 47 potential errors using this checklist in the past 18 months. Most were small—wrong quantity, wrong color code. But three were the kind of mistakes that would have cost thousands.
The (Simple) Solution: A Pre-Order Verification Checklist
Here's what I do now, and it takes about 5 minutes per order:
- Write out the exact product code (e.g., “Simonis 860 Tournament Blue – 1x1.5m roll”).
- Compare it to the client's spec sheet—every word, not just the brand name.
- Call the supplier and read the code back to them. Ask them to confirm it's correct.
- Save the written confirmation in the order file. Screenshots count.
- Double-check the P.O. against the confirmation before sending.
That's it. No fancy system. No software. Just a checklist I keep on my desk (and in my phone). It saves me about $1,200 per year in potential rework, and it's stopped me from making a fool of myself more times than I can count.
5 minutes of verification beats 5 days of correction. Take it from someone who learned the hard way.