The cord that runs through the body of the lamp that needs to be pulled from the bottom in order to bring the bulb socket down to screw onto the top of the lamp base was stuck and would not pull through without chewing up the cord. It's a potential point of failure in the way this lamp was designed that happened to fail for us. 

It's a nice enough item and it's not a huge issue but for a few minutes there I thought I was going to have to send this thing back (and maybe I should have). It's not a cheap lamp, the only assembly that should be required is screw in a bulb and plug the thing into the wall.