MFI Retail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| MFI Retail Limited | |
 |
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| Type of Company | Limited |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1965 |
| Headquarters | London |
| Industry | Furniture retailing |
| Products | Kitchens Bedrooms Bathrooms Sofas Living room furniture |
| Revenue | £1,552.2m GBP (2004/2005) |
| Website | MFI |
MFI Retail Limited, usually referred to simply as MFI, is a national British furniture retailer. It is one of the largest suppliers of kitchens and bedroom furniture in the UK. Its stores are mainly in retail parks in out-of-town locations. It is owned by private equity firm, Merchant Equity Partners.
The company was founded in London in 1964 by Noel Lister and Donald Searle and was called Mullard Furniture Industries. Mullard was Searle's wife's maiden name. For a short time in the 1980s MFI and Allied Carpets were part of the ASDA-MFI Group plc.
MFI offers a full range of furniture for your bedroom, bathrooom, kitchen, lounge, dining room and home office. It is particularly associated with self-assembly furniture, resulting in the unfortunate nick-name "Made For Idiots", from the initials "MFI".
Its products are mainly targeted to value-oriented customers with the "Hygena" brand, and those on a higher income with the "Schreiber" brand. MFI sells beds directly from Silentnight, Rest Assured and Layezee, and also sells dining furniture from The Chair Company.
It has been struggling to overcome its downmarket image and competition from Ikea for many years with limited success. On 18th October 2006, Galiform PLC successfully sold MFI Retail to Merchant Equity Partners, with a turn strategy in place. Other MFI brands include "Viva Sofa" and "The Bath Co."
For many years, MFI allowed customers to buy their items in the store and leave the store with their furniture. This was stopped in the mid-1990s due to cost and from then on all furniture was delivered from large warehouses. This has resulted in MFI having the largest two-man delivery service in Europe.
