FURNITURE BUSINESS EYES GLOBAL GROWTH

A fast-growing Wiltshire furniture business has set its sights on global growth after its sales grew to almost £17m in seven years.

Furniturebox, founded by Monty George and Dan Beckles after they left school in Salisbury, said it was expecting global sales to grow from 5% to up to 50% of its total business over the next few years.

It comes as the company reported selling £16.7m worth of furniture, up from £9.4m in 2020, and generating an annual profit of £2.4m, following a period of “huge, huge growth” during the pandemic.

The Chippenham based firm, which employs around 50 staff at its recently completed £3m, 88,000 sq ft headquarters said it had seen an “underdeveloped” market for online furniture retail, and it was now looking to break into countries such as Germany and the US.

Mr George said: “I bought a couple of containers of furniture and persuaded Dan to join forces with me to sell it online. That is how the business started. It has been an amazing seven years of growth. We know that the model we have now is highly efficient for profit generation.

We feel we can roll that out in other markets – in America, Germany and elsewhere. In the furniture industry, there aren’t really any other ecommerce companies doing the same thing as us.”

Last year, Furniturebox was ranked as the fastest growing small business in the South West by the Sunday Times and it also topped Bristol-based tech firm BrightPearl’s ‘Lightning 50’ league table, which tracks growth rates for hundreds of online businesses across the UK.

Mr George said the company was now selling its products through different channels in the UK, entered the US market through online furniture retailer Wayfair, while it had also set up more warehouses for further “worldwide” operations.

Furniturebox’s founders, who both live in Bristol, became friends at Bishop Wordsworth’s Grammar School through a mutual love of football. Mr George played for the youth teams of AFC Bournemouth and Portsmouth while Mr Dan Beckles was on Bristol Rovers’ books.

The pair, both 25, said despite its rapid growth attracting interest from venture capitalists they were not looking to sell the business or relocate from the South West.

Mr George commented: “We have so much talent in the South West. We would never head to London because we are so much happier here.”

Mr Beckles added: “The scope of what we can achieve in the future is huge and we don’t want anyone else doing that.”