Bosses at a Dundee furniture group hope lessons learned during the Covid-19 pandemic will help the firm deal with rising costs.
JTC Furniture Group supplies kitchens, bedrooms bathrooms across a range of sectors, including social housing.
The firm also has a presence in the growing student accommodation sector, as well as education and healthcare facilities.
It saw turnover fall £10 million and made 40 staff redundant as it felt the impact of the pandemic.
The business has also been impacted by Brexit, while the rise in material costs continues to have an impact.
Finance director Antony Bell said: “The last two years have been challenging with Covid, Brexit and the war in Ukraine.
“The impact that has all had on the supply chain has been a real challenge for all businesses, regardless of your market.
“We took a view to restructure the business in 2020, and in 2021 we were still quite heavily impacted.
“It’s been a difficult couple of years but we’ve come through 2021 in not a bad position and we’ll see how this year pans out.”
Dundee firm dealing with rising costs
Mr Bell said each year seems to present the firm with different challenges.
He said JTC Furniture had to increase prices “significantly” in recent months as it looks to cope with hikes in prices of material and utilities.
“Every year seems to be throwing up different challenges, and this year’s is the pricing issues that have come out of the conflict in Ukraine,” Mr Bell said.
“Everything has gone up – gas, electric, fuel – and everything we buy has gone up because suppliers’ costs have also gone up.
“As all our costs have gone up we’ve had to factor that in and increase our prices accordingly just so we can stand still.
“Every business is in the same boat.”
Mr Bell said the business decided to buy in more stock last year, and that has stood them in good stead during recent months.
There has been a significant increase in lead times for projects.
He added: “We took the view in 2021 because of the impact on lead times caused by Covid and Brexit to go deeper in stock.
“We took in a lot of extra stock to allow us to continue as normal.
“When your lead times to customers go from a week or two weeks suddenly to 16 weeks, that’s what our supply chain was going to.
“We’ve got a four-week lead time to our customer base and we’ve been able to maintain that.”
‘We’re quite pleased with where we are’
It comes as newly published accounts for JTC Furniture Group Holdings show turnover of £18.3m for the year to December 2021. That is up from £15.7m the year previous.
The group had reported sales of £26m in 2019. Mr Bell hopes the figures will return to pre-pandemic levels this year.
“We’re quite pleased with where we are and where it’s going.
“Inevitably there’s a caveat to that because you don’t know what impacts there might be in the wider economy. Those challenges are there but we just have to get on with it.
“Our 2019 turnover was £26m and that’s where we anticipate being this year.
“That gives us huge encouragement. It means the markets we’re dealing in are back up again.”
Conversation