Industry News & Analysis
The latest industry news and analysis—across all categories—listed in chronological order, with the most recent articles first.
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- REGIONAL
The managing director of Cookes Furniture, one of the largest independents in the country, says he is confident the market will improve in 2020 after last year proved "undeniably challenging for retail."
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- DATA & RESEARCH
Sales of furniture and lighting continued to climb in 2019 according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) but at the weakest rate in all of the past decade.
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- EVENTS
Heavyweight brands Collins & Hayes and Silentnight headlined the winners of The Furniture Awards 2020, announced yesterday at the January Furniture Show.
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- COMMUNITY
The Furniture Makers’ Company, the industry charity, is encouraging visitors and exhibitors at the January Furniture Show to visit its Hall 1 stand and sign up to its One Step at a Time campaign.
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- SUPPLY & WHOLESALE
LifestyleGarden, a division of ScanCom International, will this spring launch what it has described as "the first mass market piece of furniture crafted from recycled plastic waste."
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- DATA & RESEARCH
Consumer prices for furniture rose at their fastest pace in nearly two years last month, just as overall inflation in the U.K. fell to its lowest level since the back end of 2016.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Losses narrowed at East Midlands upholstery group JDP Furniture despite lower sales in 2018–19, aided by the privately-owned collective annualising against one-off costs from the previous year.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Upholstery fabrics supplier Mobus has moved into a new 65,000sqft distribution centre that will allow it to consolidate its operations on a single site.
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- FLOORCOVERINGS
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given Danspin more time to complete a sale of Yorkshire based carpet yarn spinner Lawton Yarns to an as-yet unnamed buyer.
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- COMMUNITY
National floorcoverings contractor Designer Contracts has for the second time sponsored Childline, the counselling service provided by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
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- SUPPLY & WHOLESALE
Unsecured creditors of West Midlands furniture wholesaler Serene Furnishings will likely get less than three pence in the pound back following the prepack deal that rescued the business last month.
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- CASE GOODS
The ready-to-assemble furniture arm of diversified Yorkshire manufacturer Decorative Panels posted a fall in sales last year but group revenue picked up on higher component sales.
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- ECOMMERCE
Shop Direct's transition to become The Very Group has completed with the North West home shopping retailer reporting mid single-digit growth over the festive season at its principal brand.
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- FLOORCOVERINGS
Headlam, Europe's largest floorcoverings distributor, says its new £26 million regional distribution centre at Ipswich is on track for operational completion by Easter.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Robert Aramayo, son of Buoyant Upholstery md Mike Aramayo and known to many of the sofa maker's customers after assisting during NEC shows, has landed a leading role in Amazon's new Lord of the Rings series.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
A sharp drop in foam and sprung mattress imports in November pushed the year-to-date total negative, threatening a first full-year decline in the value of foreign-made goods in seven years.
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- ECOMMERCE
Furniture retailer Loaf has appointed a replacement chief financial officer for Tim Parfitt, who left the company for a new role in the beds sector last year.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Home sales fell for the sixth straight week at John Lewis & Partners with the chain annualising against a strong competitor promotion from this time last year, which it price-matched.
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- SUPPLY & WHOLESALE
Wood bedroom, living and dining cabinet furniture imports climbed ahead of the year-to-date trend in November on strengthening trade with two of the three biggest Far East markets.
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- COMMUNITY
Harrison Spinks' Ruairi Giles is to raise money for industry charity The Furniture Makers’ Company by taking part in the 2020 London Marathon.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Sofa market leader DFS reported a mid single-digit decline in sales for the second half of 2019 but said it will meet profit expectations for its financial year if it can hit its revenue growth target.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Italian sofa imports dropped by a third in November keeping the nation on track to be the only major source of foreign upholstery sold in the U.K. to see a full year decline in 2019.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Footfall at out-of-town shopping parks, home to many of the U.K.'s largest furniture and flooring retailers, near held in December despite fewer shoppers frequenting other retail destinations.
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- FLOORCOVERINGS
British carpet imports from Belgium, the principal source of overseas-produced flooring sold in the U.K. market, fell sharply in November, meaning they have now dropped in seven of the past eight months.
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- UPHOLSTERY
BFM Fabric Show London will host five new exhibitors in addition to 33 returning suppliers when it takes place at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge stadium next month.
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- ECOMMERCE
Former lenders to Swoon now control 30 percent of the predominantly ecommerce furniture retailer after the prepack administration deal that rescued the business before Christmas.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Department store chain Beales hopes to tie up a rescue deal within days that will see it emerge in a slimmed down form. It faces being placed into administration if the transaction fails to complete.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
Mattress brand Casper Sleep has filed the paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S., with it to sell shares in the business to raise cash for growth, working capital and debt pay-down.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
Revenue declined for a second straight year at Burnley bed manufacturer Sweet Dreams in 2018–19 but wider gross margin helped limit the impact on profits.
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- SUPPLY & WHOLESALE
West Midlands case goods wholesaler Heartlands Furniture has been fined after pleading guilty to breaches of the E.U. Timber Regulation (EUTR).
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- REGIONAL
Profits jumped for Ponsford, one of the largest furniture retailers of its type in the country, as the privately-owned company found savings and margin improvement in 2018–19 amid lower turnover.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
Britain's leading bed manufacturers shifted more product in the later months of 2019 but a fall in average order values held back the value of sales growth.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Marks and Spencer cited lower furniture dispatches as a factor in weaker-than-expected online sales in its third quarter. The run rate subsequently improved while it also narrowed its overall decline in clothing and home sales.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Interim sales jumped 6.0 percent to £585 million for homewares retailer Dunelm with the chain's online channel the main growth driver, it said in a trading update.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
John Lewis & Partners managing director Paula Nickolds is leaving after 25 years with the department store chain. It means she won't take up the newly-created role announced last autumn as part of a management merger with Waitrose.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
Stuart Hibbert, who co-founded and ran Breasley Consumer until selling his shares in 2017, is to return to the bed industry with GNG Group Yorkshire.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Furniture and home retailer IKEA is pressing ahead with plans to build a bigger presence in urban areas with a new store slated for Hammersmith, London.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Currency and input cost headwinds together with a first fall in sales in four years hindered sofa maker ACL 2002 last year, but didn't stop the West Midlands company investing in production.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Sofa Brands International, the group behind the G Plan, Parker Knoll and Collins and Hayes upholstery businesses, has recruited Duncan Miller as its new chief financial officer.
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- TRADE & INDUSTRY
Charles Vernon, chairman of the Furniture Industry Research Association, is to step down from the role in September, prompting a search for a successor.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
The sale of furniture chain AHF a year and a half ago gave it the chance to refresh its retail offering and marked the beginning of it reversing a negative sales trend.
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- SUPPLY & WHOLESALE
Pier 1 Imports, the North American furniture and home furnishings retailer and among the world's largest in the category, plans to close 450 shops in a huge downsizing of its store network that could reverberate in other markets.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
General merchandise sales trended down for the third consecutive quarter at Argos owner J Sainsbury in the final weeks of 2019, underachieving compared with its grocery and clothing categories.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
A fifth consecutive week of home sales decline at John Lewis suggests the retailer peaked early in the category after cutting prices last autumn.
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- INTERNATIONAL
Otto Group, the diversified retail and logistics giant with global sales of €13.4 billion, has hired former Debenhams CEO Sergio Bucher to its executive board.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Profits before non-cash and debt interest costs jumped by nearly a third at Furniture Village last year as the retailer booked higher sales and initiated its plan to lower overheads.
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- SUPPLY & WHOLESALE
The future of West Midlands furniture wholesaler Serene Furnishings has been secured after the company's business and assets were sold in a prepack administration deal.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
IKEA, the world's largest furniture and home retailer, has agreed to pay $46 million (£35m) to the parents of a young child who died after a piece of furniture tipped over when he climbed on it.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Danish furniture and homewares retailer JYSK says it will open its 20th U.K. store in early March as it kickstarts an opening programme designed to near treble its network by 2024.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
Bensons for Beds has expanded its range of products exclusively designed by Sir Terence Conran, adding what it calls a luxury hotel-style bedframe to its existing offer.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Mattressman, the East of England beds retail chain that restructured in the summer of 2018, says it has begun to regain lost ground and can return to profit in the current financial year.
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- REGIONAL
Bath furniture retailer Silcox Son and Wicks is planning a major refurbishment project at its New Street store that will see it close for the bulk of the year ahead.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
A four-store retailer that folded last autumn leaves creditors owed £4.6 million according to a new report, with more than a fifth of its debts due to the tax man.
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- DATA & RESEARCH
Retailers enjoyed mid single-digit sales growth in December as a slight rise in store sales was bolstered by an increase of nearly a quarter in online demand, according to a closely-followed retail survey.
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- FLOORCOVERINGS
Return to growth for North London rug distributor.
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- BEDS & MATTRESSES
Mattress wholesaler and retailer Simba Sleep has procured new investment by way of U.S. private equity company Cartesian Capital, with it planning to use the cash injection to expand internationally.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
Underlying profits jumped by a quarter for furniture-to-fashion retailer The White Company in 2018–19 with it citing a strong U.K. store performance and reduced emphasis on discounting.
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- UPHOLSTERY
Trentside Products, one of the industry's most prominent furniture components suppliers, has appointed former DFS buyer Ashleigh Ellis as business development manager.
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- RETAIL & DISTRIBUTION
An online window dressings retailer has been told to change its promotional message after home furnishings retail giant Dunelm complained to the advertising watchdog.
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- CASE GOODS
Insolvency practitioners hope to find a buyer for the assets of Prentice Furniture Manufacturers, a Staffordshire based kitchen maker, after the company entered administration just before Christmas.
