Memo samples: what they are, what they cost, and the etiquette
Memo versus CFA, deposits and returns, and the unwritten etiquette that keeps a showroom lending you the good samples.
Two words do a lot of work in a wallcovering showroom: "memo" and "CFA." Confusing them is a giveaway that someone is new to the trade, and getting them right keeps the sampling process moving.
A memo sample is a loaner. The showroom lends a swatch, often a generous piece and sometimes a full sample-book page, so a designer can study the material at the project. Memos are meant to come back. Many showrooms track them, some ask for a credit card on file, and a few charge a nominal fee that is refunded on return. The point is that memo stock is finite. The same swatch gets lent again and again, so returning it promptly is not a courtesy, it is what keeps the library intact for the next project.
A CFA, cut for approval, is different in kind. It is a physical cutting taken from the actual roll that will fulfill the order, sent so the buyer can approve the real color and dye lot before the full quantity is cut and shipped. You request a CFA when color is critical and the stakes of a mismatch are high: a large field, an executive space, a job where a reorder later would land in a different lot. Approving a CFA is the moment the risk transfers. Once you sign off, that is the color you are getting.
Policies vary more than newcomers expect. Some showrooms send memos free and never chase them; others cap the size of a memo, or charge for anything larger than a standard swatch and credit it back on return; a few now mail small stock samples straight to a designer's studio. CFA turnaround also swings widely, from a couple of days on a stocked domestic line to a couple of weeks on goods cut overseas, which is exactly why a color-critical decision cannot be left to the final week of a schedule.
The etiquette around all of this is unglamorous but real. Return memos. Do not request a stack of samples for a project that is not moving. Be specific about what you need so the showroom does not have to guess. Order enough the first time, because a second cutting from a different lot is exactly the problem the CFA exists to prevent. Showrooms remember who wastes their sample stock and who does not, and that memory shows up in how fast the good samples come the next time.