Serene Furnishings – now Serene Beds and Serene Living – is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Very much the product of its founder and MD, Tasleem Tasab, Serene is known today for its breadth of range, product quality and delivery. With the addition of living and dining furniture to its already-formidable beds offer, Tasleem’s empire is expanding apace, as visitors to Manchester Furniture Show will soon discover. Keen to discover the story behind this growth, Paul Farley caught up with Tasleem at Serene’s headquarters in West Bromwich …
“There’s never a right time to enter an industry. I was told from day one that my timing wasn’t perfect, that it was a cut-throat business – but isn’t that the strapline you hear in every trade? Success is down to effort, product and luck. Give it 100%, and you’ll be rewarded.”
So says Tasleem Tasab of his decision to launch Serene Furnishings on the eve of global recession. A decade down the line, Tasleem has proved that a formula of research, flexibility and hard graft can take you to the top of the pile. His biggest regret right now is merely that he didn’t get there sooner.
“Due to space constraints, I couldn’t launch Serene Living at the January show this year,” says Tasleem. “Which hurts, because, given the response we’ve seen since, I know it would have taken off straight away.”
Instead, having unveiled some models to Minerva members in May, Serene Living will make its trade-wide exhibition debut at next month’s Manchester Furniture Show, where it will present part of a huge initial portfolio comprising 17 recliners, 48 chair variants and 15 dining tables – alongside even more additions to the company’s 800 SKU-plus bed offer.
Much of Serene’s strength lay in its diverse and ever-growing product portfolio, which has been central to Tasleem’s approach from day one. “A wholesaler might have a bed that’s doing really well, but they’d only offer it in one size,” he reminisces. “We changed that. We supplied beds you could sell many times over – different colourways and sizes, even 4ft models and guest beds – from just one display model. When I started, that approach didn’t even exist for the independent market.
“For Serene Living, I’ve gone in with a whole spectrum of product, covering every base from the outset – the budget, middle and premium price points, sizes and styles. Although having good performers in every segment might make good commercial sense, I never wanted to be a general furniture supplier, offering a couple of variants of everything.
“I’m a specialist – as a wholesaler, I think we have the biggest metal bed range in the marketplace. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that our new recliner offer is on par with the industry’s best.”
The road to Serene’s offices is flanked by warehouse after warehouse, reinforcing the scale of Tasleem’s import operation. Over the 10 years, his stockholding capacity has grown steadily to just over 203,000 sqft of warehouse space, in West Bromwich and nearby Kingswinford.
With the addition of the Serene Living business arm, Tasleem has taken on further sales, administrative and operational staff, taking the number of Serene’s employees over 40 – but everything has to start somewhere.
“In the beginning, I was in the fortunate position of having some time to consider what I wanted to do, but I needed to get my teeth into something. I had a few options on the table. My background was IT, so I initially looked at importing IT hardware and multimedia peripherals.
“Then a friend of the family introduced me to the notion of importing furniture and, following some research and meetings with several furniture retailers, I formalised the range I wanted to launch, and flew out to visit the Asian shows in March 2004.” An odyssey of fairs from Singapore to Guangzhou saw Tasleem settle on Malaysia as his production base. He ordered five containers, took on a 5000ft2 warehouse on a flexible-term lease, and started to develop a brochure with local graphic designers. He says: “I remember sitting at my desk in the back office of my parents’ house, with all this product coming in, brochures designed and printed, and adverts for agents out for a number of weeks – but I’d had no leads come through, and no-one in place to sell for me!”
In desperation, he took to the phones to engage agents directly. Steve Mcallister – who still works for Serene, covering the North-east and Yorkshire, was the first to respond.
“Steve took a look at the brochure, and agreed it would be good to meet up. He wryly commented that he wouldn’t have ordered half of the models I’d specified …” Tasleem laughs. “Funnily enough, despite that, a couple of those items still sell very strongly for us today!”
The initial response was encouraging. On their first retailer visit together, Tasleem and Steve managed to take a £1000 order.
Tasleem admits that competing on price “seemed the best strategy in those days”, but, whilst he maintained keen margins, he also looked to expand his range and capacity as the reinvestment of profits began.
Within 11 months of trading, Serene moved from its warehouse to one double the size, adding headboards and guest beds to the portfolio, and taking on more agents to handle increasing demand. “In those days, we made about £20,000 a month,” says Tasleem, “which seemed like a lot back then.”
Splitting the heavy management workload with his wife and brother, Tasleem’s focus returned to his true passion – product development. He says: “I was always asking myself, what’s commercial, what’s the market missing?”
Building on the company’s metal bed foundations, faux leather proved a strong route. In 2010, Tasleem engaged with high street furniture designers. “I felt I could use some inspiration,” he says. “Faux leather beds, compared to metal ones, seemed quite restricted in terms of style – especially at the bottom end – and I wanted to bring something different to the marketplace.”
The Faux Leather Collection was born. With each model named after an Italian city, the range blended contemporary and traditional styles, with many designs featuring innovative storage solutions.
In 2012 Tasleem introduced bed collections in hevea, and fabric – Serene being one of the first importers to sell such a collection of fabric-upholstered beds to the UK independents. Serene’s rubberwood Hevea collection saw good growth, bolstered by its sustainability angle – the range employs wood from the brasiliensis tree, which is only felled for use in furniture production once it has reached the end of its natural rubber-producing life, when it is replaced by new plantings.
Yet it was fabric which proved the most lucrative direction, and with the success of Serene’s fabric ottomans at this year’s January Furniture Show, the momentum of that trend shows no sign of slowing. Fabric is a highlight of the Serene Living offer, too, its serpentine-sprung seats helping the company win early converts.
The introduction of Serene Living has meant no less emphasis on the Serene Beds side of the business – in January, 21 new products were introduced across Serene’s Fabric, Oak and Precious Metals bed collections – but it certainly makes Tasleem’s offer more attractive to retailers looking for a one-stop supply solution.
“The Serene name is now well known in the marketplace,” says Tasleem, “and, thankfully, we are viewed positively. As an importer, we know what we’re doing, and have the distribution network to prove it – 75% of our products are delivered on our own trucks, offering seven-10 day delivery nationwide.
“Crucially, when placing an order, our customers are confident we’ll have the product in stock and fulfil their order – if we were one of those companies that didn’t deliver on our promises, we wouldn’t be where we are now!
“We command a good proportion of our factories’ production, and have more than 200,000 sqft of storage space over here. I could have a minimum of three months’ worth of stock in the warehouse at any one time, providing a contingency of four to five weeks’ worth of product in the case of any delay or emergency. At the moment, we have 98% of our 1200 SKUs in stock.”
With 10 years of steady growth behind him, Tasleem is justifiably proud of what the company has become. From those early days, setting up the company from scratch in his parents’ house, taking charge of every aspect of the business – from product developer to delivery driver, to managing a workforce of more than 40 people across two divisions today – it’s been quite a journey.
However, so many years of responsibility have left Tasleem with one of his biggest challenges to date – letting go.
“I’d like to get out on the road more, and I’d focus more on product development and sales if I could,” he says, “but I remain busy in every aspect of the business. From purchasing, dispatch and HR to customer services and accounts, I’m involved in it all.” Having appointed several management-level staff to oversee the company’s various divisions, Tasleem is now in the process of delegating power, and, although he acknowledges that this is the only way to move forward, he admits that it doesn’t come naturally.
“All that hard work, and the long hours … many times, I’ve been working here in this office virtually all night. I’ve built the credibility of this business on good practice and communication, and I can’t let it fall short.
“According to recruitment consultants, owner-directors can be hard to work with. I guess that makes sense – after all, the business is in our blood.”
This article was published in the June issue of Furniture News magazine.
