ScS-owner Poltronesofà is close to completing a £57m transformation of 96 of the sofa retailer’s stores and expects it to be “highly profitable” by 2026, Retail Week can reveal.
The European sofa giant acquired ScS at the beginning of 2024 and began the programme of investment by the summer of last year.
The refit programme is expected to finish by August 2025, following the modernisation and layout improvement of 15 further stores, which the retailer says is “setting the stage for sustained growth and a transformed customer experience”.
Poltronesofà told Retail Week that trading in 2025 from the 60 refurbished stores had been “extremely encouraging” and there had been significant increases against the performance in 2024 and 2023.
With many ScS stores closed for refurbishment for an average of 12 weeks, Poltronesofà said the disruption would result in temporary lower revenues and impacted profits in 2024, however the business was performing “in line with management expectationss”.
The retailer also said the business was in a positive cash position despite non-recurring costs relating to the acquisition and refits, and there had been a return to order growth in the current year. Poltronesofà expects the UK business to be “highly profitable” in 2026, benefitting from the first full year of normal trading from its renewed stores.
Poltronesofà Group chief financial officer Luca Mazzotti, said: “The financial strength of the Poltronesofà business across Europe gives us the ability to invest for growth in the UK and we are already reaping the benefits of that investment.
“Over 30 years in business and we have two burning obsessions – the quality of our products and delivering value to our customers. Now we are bringing those two obsessions to our UK customers with amazing store experiences and a superb new range of products and fabrics.”
In addition to the new store layouts, ScS will now offer Poltronesofà’s “any sofa, any fabrics” customisation service which the retailer believes is unique to the UK market. The offer allows shoppers to choose from 66 highly customisable sofa models in more than 200 different fabrics or leathers, with more than 250,000 resulting combinations.
Since the retailer withdrew from the flooring and dining business it has given “detailed training” for UK salespeople on its core sofa offering at the Poltronesofà “university”, which provides over 650 hours of courses at the group’s Forli headquarters.
“Poltronesofà acquired ScS to enter a key market and support the next stage of its development, providing the capital needed to accelerate its ambitions.” said Mazzotti.
“This significant investment – in product, stores and staff – shows us delivering on those promises.”
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