Furniture makers buy area, not romance. What decides the order is how many usable square feet come off the hide after you cut around the defects, and that number is set long before the leather reaches you.
We inspect every sheet before it ships and grade for cutting yield, so the hide you plan around is the hide that arrives. If a batch will not cut the way you need, we tell you before it leaves, not after.
Every shipment is inspected sheet by sheet before it leaves. Nothing goes out on a sample average.