dfs (retailer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DFS is a national furniture retailer in the United Kingdom which specialises in sofas.

1 History
- 1.1 Northern Upholstery
2 Dfs
3 Marketing
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

After passing the Eleven plus exam, Graham Kirkham, now Baron Kirkham of Old Cantley attended Maltby Grammar School and hoped to join the Royal Air Force as a pilot. Failing to get the required five O levels, Kirkham got a job in a local furniture store.

[edit] Northern Upholstery

In 1969 aged 22, Kirkham was married with two children, which he describes as great motivation^[1].

Having visited a few manufacturers in his daily work, he decided that making furniture was relatively easy and that by cutting out the warehouse dealers in the middle of the supply chain, he could sell direct to the public at cheaper prices. Kirkham rented a room above a snooker hall in Carcroft, and started making furniture upstairs and retailing it downstairs.

[edit] Dfs

By 1983, Darley Dale–based Direct Furnishing Supplies had become one of Northern Upholstery biggest suppliers. When Direct Furnishing Supplies went bankrupt with debts of £900,000 on a turnover of £3,000,000, Kirkham bought it. Northern Upholstery now renamed itself DFS (although branches of Northern Upholstery in Yorkshire had retained their original name until about the mid 1990s) and at the time had a total of 63 stores employing 2,000 staff.

In 1993 DFS was floated on the stock market and valued at £271million, with Kirkham and his family trusts owning just over half of the shares. This brought the Kirkham family to the attention of thieves, who in 1994 broke into the family home at Sprotborough while they were on holiday. The burglars bound and gagged the housekeeper and made off with money and jewels worth £2.4m - later recovered, but still South Yorkshire's largest armed robbery^[2].

In 1998 DFS announced its first drop in profits in 28 years to the London Stock Exchange. The company found a third of customers admitted to a leather fetish, and so repitched its advertising from a middle aged couple to lithesome blondes and brunette models draped over sofas, and a billboard of a model covering up her breasts with flowers on a DFS armchair. In 2000 DFS announced a 79 per cent profit increase^[3].

But the revival was short lived, and in light of the continuing prevalence for Private Equity, Kirkham took the chain private again, leveraging his family's own 9.46% stake with £150million of family funds^[4] in an eventual £496 million deal^[5]^[6]. Kirkham told the Yorkshire Post: "It's something that's caused me fitful sleep in the time I've been thinking about it. I've no hobby, this is my hobby – it's what I do. I'm an entrepreneur. It's almost as if I can feel the adrenaline running through my veins."^[7]

[edit] Marketing

DFS have used 'Deals For Sunday' as their full name in marketing in the past, a name which has become popularised in reference to the root of their abbreviated name.

For many years in the 1980s and 90s actor Tom Adams was the face of dfs's television advertisements. He famously read out the catchphrase "Darley-Dale, Measham, Droitwich, Grantham, Northampton, Shrewsbury, Cannock, Fenton and Banbury" at the end of each commercial. Eventually so many new stores opened that this listing was stopped.

It is noted in popular culture as having seemingly never-ending sales, through extensive marketing. Its advertisements have also been critically noted as normally featuring overly large styles of sofas in minimalist designer houses, which boast far more space than the typical house of the target audience of the advert. In July 2007 the company started a TV and print campaign where they gently ribbed their own reputation for never-ending sales, stating that they actually only have 2 sales a year, and the rest are just special prices.