What do you think? From emerging trends to the latest business principles, Furniture News is setting out to gauge the trade’s feelings on a variety of industry-specific topics. Today, we’re asking our panel: Has your business ever been a victim of crime?
Garry Preston (TR Hayes): Yes, being near the city centre, we had several issues of shoplifting (not forgetting credit card fraud, which we’ve also been a victim of)
Jonny Westbrooke (The Furniture Makers’ Company): The charity has seen a couple of fraud attempts since Covid. Sadly, there are some unscrupulous people out there, so we are very vigilant for fraudulent applications for welfare grants, some of which can be very sophisticated
Daryl Drylie (ID Agencies): At a SFRA [Scottish Furnishings Representatives Association] function, the hotel reception staff cloned my card and went shopping online. Luckily, the bank refunded all monies and the staff were caught
John Pattison (ex-Sterling Furniture Group): We suffered from theft in our homewares items, more than we dd in big-ticket – it’s harder to walk out with a sofa! My concern here isn’t the cost of the steal though, it’s the effect on team members, and the lack of prosecution just encourages it
John Tuton (Mammoth): We’ve been fortunate not to have been targeted by serious criminal activity. We have, however, been required to challenge a number of IP infringements over the years to protect our position in the market. And we’ve always been successful in doing so
Phil Gant (PG Agencies): Not yet, keeping everything crossed!
Hamish Mansbridge (Heal’s): Of course! Every retail business suffers from theft. But there have also been more interesting and sophisticated attempts to defraud …
Ashley Hainsworth (Flair Furniture): We had a burglary where 100 beds were stolen from our warehouse. The police were not interested in investigating, and didn’t even collect the CCTV footage
This article featured in April's edition of Furniture News.
