All Home & DIY articles – Page 281
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News
Saint Maclou tightens grip on French carpet market
Saint Maclou, the French parent company of UK carpet retailer Allied Carpets, has ramped up its European presence by acquiring its biggest French rival – Mondial Moquette – and Switzerland’s Carpetland Suisse.
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Opinion
Is Kingfisher only worth 92p?
Kingfisher boss Ian Cheshire will report on how his DIY retail improvement project is going next Thursday, when a pre-close update is due.
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News
Kingfisher poaches Ikea and DSGi bosses
DIY giant Kingfisher has poached Ikea’s UK chief executive, Peter Hogsted, to head its international division.
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News
MFI calls in restructuring expert
Furniture retailer MFI is understood to have called in corporate restructuring company Kroll Talbot Hughes (KTH) as the credit crunch bites.
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News
Regional malls continue to deliver for House of Fraser despite fuel worries
House of Fraser is bucking the sales downturn at out-of-town centres, recording like-for-like rises at its stores in regional malls despite claims that consumers are cutting back on visits.
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News
OKA Direct sets up Cotswolds show house
Furniture and homewares retailer OKA Direct has bought a Georgian house in the Cotswolds to convert into a showroom that it claims will set it apart from the rest of the high street.
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News
Tesco takes on Argos with first catalogue shop launch
Tesco has launched its first Argos-style shop-in-shop at its Homeplus store in Bristol, which opened this week.
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News
DFS kicks off rock star summer Sale ads
DFS has launched a summer Sale campaign that centres on shoppers’ rock-star fantasies.
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Analysis
Topps Tiles: the City view
Topps has lost more than half its value in the past three months as housing market fears and covenant concerns weigh heavy.
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Analysis
Mounting recession speculation sends retail stocks into tailspin
The pall of looming recession hung black over the City all week, pitching the entire market into steep decline.
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News
MFI kitchens ads to woo top-end buyers
Furniture retailer MFI has launched an ad campaign for its K chen Lab range of German-engineered kitchens with the aim of tapping into the premium market.
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News
Consumer spend to slow to 0.5% next year
Consumer spending growth in the UK will slow to just 0.5 per cent next year as households face high energy and food prices and falling property values.
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News
Shop price rise for June stays below inflation
June shop prices were 2.5 per cent higher than last year but below overall inflation, according to the BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index.
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News
Dunelm like-for-likes fall
Out-of-town specialist homewares retailer Dunelm recorded a 2.4 per cent fall in like-for-like sales in the 13 weeks to June 28, 2008. Total sales rose 7.7 per cent in the period.
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Opinion
Location, location, location
It’s always easy to be wise after the event, but the demise of Ilva in the UK has to be seen as an accident waiting to happen.
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News
OKA enjoys first-half growth
Furniture and interiors retailer OKA Direct has bucked the downward trend in the homewares sector to report 24 per cent year-on-year growth for its first half.
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News
Carpetright to desert expensive retail parks
Carpetright is aiming to shift 90 per cent of its store portfolio from high-rent A1 retail parks to bulky-goods parks to better weather the economic downturn.
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Opinion
It’s bad, but it’ll get worse
No offence to Beales, but it’s come to something when it’s capitalised at three times as much as the two quoted sofa retailers.
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News
Carpetright to up staff communication
Carpetright will roll out a store communications system to its 550 shops and concessions in the UK and Ireland.
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News
Retailers slide as M&S’s share dive leads wave of falling stocks
While Marks & Spencer’s terrible performance in food grabbed the headlines on Wednesday, it was the general retailers that got a battering, as Sir Stuart Rose warned the market was at its toughest since the early 1990s.