Sofa retailer Sofa Workshop has seen tough times, but now it’s sitting pretty. John Ryan talks to managing director Ian McGuffog about its latest format.

Buying a sofa is straightforward, isn’t it? Jump in the car and head off to the nearest edge-of-town shed and take your pick. The only difficult point is that if any degree of individuality is required, things may be a little tricky. Mass-market furnishing means most sofas looking very similar in most retailers.

This is fine, but there is a market for semi-bespoke products, according to Ian McGuffog, managing director of Sofa Workshop, who says that customers visiting a branch of the 15-strong chain come in search of alternatives.

Sofa Workshop has been in existence since 1986 but hit a low point in early 2009 following the collapse of its owner, MFI, in 2008.

McGuffog was part of the consortium that “saved” Sofa Workshop from administration in 2009 and today he says that the retailer, subsequently acquired by DFS in October 2013, is in good health and is “growing”.

And the latest evidence of this can be found at the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford where the retailer recently opened a 2,500 sq ft store in the open-air part of the mall known as ‘The Street’.

The right size

The new shop is next door to a DFS concept store of almost identical size. McGuffog says that the aim is to be able to compare and contrast the performance of the two stores in a location where footfall is likely to be high and new formats can be put to the test.

DFS is normally part of the out-of-town shed coterie and is not usually found in shopping centres or in city centres. All of which notwithstanding, it opened a large store on London’s Tottenham Court Road in the middle of 2012 and the Westfield Stratford store is a new much smaller format that aims to reach shoppers who might not otherwise come into contact with the brand.

Sofa Workshop, by contrast, arrives at Westfield from a different position. This is a retailer found predominantly in upscale high street locations and it also has two mall stores, in the Bentalls Centre in Kingston and Edinburgh’s Ocean Terminal, in Leith.

“I want people to come in and go ‘wow this is different’”

Ian McGuffog, Sofa Workshop

A number of its stores are actually considerably smaller than the Stratford store, but McGuffog says that the size “seems to work well”.

DFS is, broadly, a proposition where shoppers can buy a sofa ‘off the peg’, as it were. The Sofa workshop shopper, by contrast, is presented with an almost bewildering choice with hundreds of options that can be applied to multiple sofas.

McGuffog is clear about the purpose of the latest Sofa Workshop store: “I want people to come in and go ‘wow this is different’. It is also important that people recognise that we sell standard and bespoke. This will be our new concept going forward.”

Exercise in lighting

From the outside, the Sofa Workshop and DFS stores are more or less the same. They both have floor-to-ceiling glass frontages and both, unsurprisingly, have sofas in the windows. The DFS logo is rather more in your face with the strapline “The Sofa Experts” appearing directly beneath the logo.

The more low-key Sofa Workshop frontage also has a strapline, but this appears on the white wall set back from the entrance reading “individual sofas, for individuals”. This is carved into the wall and is not given a contrast colour.

The idea behind the difference is simple: customers of the two propositions are probably as different as the options that are presented to them.

Step inside the Sofa Workshop and the view is domestic. There is no real sense of sofas being crowded into the space. Indeed, the vista is interrupted in the middle of the shop by a dark wood desk that breaks the shop into two halves and which has a computer monitor on it. To the left of the desk there is a sofa covering swatch library.

DSCN1025

Overall, the feeling is more John Lewis haberdashery than any kind of edge-of-town titan. It is also worth noting that other than the desktop monitor there are no screens – a sharp contrast with the DFS next door, which draws the eye through the space thanks to a large screen, showing off sofas, happy families and suchlike.

The Sofa Workshop interior is also an exercise in lighting the stock rather than the shop. That means there are areas of light and relative dark that is also reflected by the walls. There are light-coloured walls across the majority of the interior, which contrasts with a dark panelled wall in the middle of the shop, next to the desk.

The latter is there for a purpose as it provides a link between Sofa Workshop’s online presence and the shop.

Link between in-store and online

McGuffog says the product shots on its website have been photographed using the panelled wall as a backdrop and that this is about continuity between the two channels. “People coming into the shop, will have already had a look and done their research online and then they’ll see the same thing in the shop.”

As for the table, it’s there for a purpose. This is where customers can peruse the fabrics that are in the many books beneath the table. For the most part, these are fabrics from third-party suppliers who will provide alternative coverings to those displayed on the perimeter poles – which are Sofa Workshop own brand.

“There are probably 51 towns that we could be in”

Ian McGuffog, Sofa Workshop

The flooring is neutral, ensuring that attention is focused on the mid-shop sofas, but there is no sense of being pressed. As an experience, this is a leisured shop, befitting the generally upscale nature of the offer.

A template for Sofa Workshop’s future therefore and McGuffog says expansion is on the cards for the retailer that has a portfolio that already stretches from Edinburgh to Exeter.

“There are probably 51 towns that we could be in and we’ve got a list. The problem is that everybody else does the same research and has the same list, but as sites become available, we are in a position to do something about it,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Stratford store sits very comfortably next to its sister brand and although both retailers cover the same category, there is sufficient difference between the two to justify the adjacency.

Sofa Workshop, Westfield Stratford

Opened: March 2015

Size: 2,500 sq ft

Design: je+1

Fitout: TPS Visual Communications

Managing director: Ian McGuffog