Furniture Village has doubled its employee profit share payouts in the wake of strong sales in its last FY (ended June 2024).
Furniture Village's order intake last year was up some +3% on a LFL basis, which, together with improved margins and strong cost controls, enabled it to produce an even stronger trading performance, with profits in the order of £12.35m – a record year outside of the immediate post-Covid period, says the retailer.
"Whilst the troubles in the Middle East and Suez in particular caused a degree of disruption to deliveries, our supply chain and fulfilment teams were able to work smartly to contain the disruption to a minimum," says Furniture Village. "These results far exceeded the prior year and the budget we set ourselves, and the additional profit generated has enabled us to double the amount paid out in our Family Partnership Profit Share scheme this year to around 1050 of our employees of c.£2.25m."
With the share buyback in October 2022 resulting in the business becoming 100% family owned, Furniture Village was able to implement a company-wide profit-sharing scheme known as the Family Partnership’ Given the results produced in 22/23, it shared approximately £1.25m with all eligible employees across the business (around 1000) in the inaugural profit share scheme payment, which was actioned in August last year.
Furniture Village reported a PBT of £10.1m.
“Whilst these results are as yet unaudited, given the integrity of our financial reporting over the years, we have every confidence that our reported results will mirror these,” says CFO Eamon Wynne.
Chairman Peter Harrison comments: “Improving performance is not a God-given right, especially in the big-ticket sector, which is often more sensitive to economic and political fluctuations. However, our commitment to taking care of our customers and, most importantly, our own people has proven invaluable during these uncertain times.
"We firmly believe in bringing our people along with us, and these results are a testament to their extraordinary efforts, for which we are immensely grateful. The same goes for all of our highly valued suppliers whom themselves have battled against the same difficult trading conditions as a result of various economic and political challenges.”
MD Charlie Harrison adds: “Once again, we have demonstrated that it is possible to be profitable and cash generative yet still ‘do it properly’, as we say. We have no borrowings and no external shareholders, but sufficient funds to continue to grow organically by investing in new and existing stores as well as online.
"Throughout the years we have been very considered and deliberate in our expansion strategy and our plans are to continue to grow in a sensible, measured way, taking advantage of the right opportunities when they become available.
"We have recently announced that we will be opening our first store in Edinburgh, Scotland on Boxing Day 2024 – swiftly followed by three or four more. Fully recognising the immense opportunities presented by ever-improving technology, we are also investing substantially in a new ERP system which will be up and running in the next 18-24 months and we are similarly very grateful to Sci>Net and many of our own highly skilled personnel for helping us to bring home this project successfully.”
