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As with many furniture companies during the worldwide recession, a Norfolk company has been forced to make lay offs to assist in keeping their company going and slash costs.

This Norfolk company, based in Attleborough started by sending letters to their staff to see who would be prepared to take voluntary redundancy, not something any company likes doing.
“We currently employ 142 people, regrettably we still need to reduce our staffing levels across the business by eight.”

“If anything, we’ve really just got this week to see if anyone comes forward, and after that we’re going to have another look,” he said.

In total, they have made 43 members of staff redundant from its headquarters last year with many regrets of having to downsize their workforce. This was needed though to prepare to ride out the credit crunch.

As well as this the company has set a 4 day week to reduce the amount of money spent on salaries with other money invested in new designs.

Mr Seaman from their management spoke saying they are also looking for many other areas to cut costs to keep the company going. The more costs which are cut elsewhere, the more jobs will be saved although they are optimistic for the future.

In total they have spent three months looking at ways to reduce these costs where possible.

It has been reported that retailers of furniture throughout the United Kingdom has enjoyed their best month ever for three years so before the recession hit, especially after a range of clearance deals from most. Homeware also helped a 1.8 percent rise in like for like sales which was a rise from 1.4 percent in June. This is due to a report from the British Retail Consortium KPMG survey.

Considering there is a credit crunch at the moment this Is fantastic news, this then was boosted even more by Easter. These figures are said by many to show that the worst of the credit crunch is over with many people returning online to by furniture for their home.

Stephen Robertson who is the director general of the BRC said “The largely cooler, wetter second half of the month turned attention indoors, helping sales of furniture and homewares which have been under pressure throughout the downturn. There are some signs that people are using holidays to improve their homes rather than spending on going away.”

The complete total of retail sales in July of 2009 grew by 3.6 percent which was much better than the 3.2 percent which was recorded for June 2009. This was lower though than the April figure of 6.3 intense sales for the month. This is great news for many furniture retailers who for the last 3 years have recorded much lower. One area of furniture sales was Clearance sales which has helped sales along with the wet weather instead of garden furniture sales.

DIY retailers have said to have benefited where people have decided to upgrade, decorate or modernise their home instead of moving home. Many of us know that a new set of furniture, decorating one or more rooms to our home can provide a very fresh new look. Now retailers are looking at the Back To School range as the weather has cooled down with people looking to buy Autumn items such as wellies.

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