After DFS unveiled its impending £25m takeover of Sofology, the sofa stalwart’s boss Ian Filby told Retail Week that the 37-store retailer has been on his radar for some time. 

Filby admits he’d been following Sofology “with a great deal of interest” over the last few years and considers the acquisition an opportunity to tap into a “young and trendy” market. 

“Sofology boss Jason [Tyldesley] has done a great job at differentiating the business over the last few years,” he says.

For this reason, he explains, when the two retailers are co-located, the dynamic is “more complementary than competitive”. 

According to Filby, DFS’ other brands – Sofa Workshop and Dwell – and partners, which include French Connection, Country Living and new addition Joules, deliberately cover different customer segments.

“Sofology has done a great bit of positioning with a younger, trendy, very designer-orientated, more millennial customer base.

“So the idea of us working together, with our lower cost base and access to better costs, and their differentiated position, has become quite exciting.” 

Digital prowess

Filby also believes the deal will be mutually beneficial from a digital and fulfilment perspective.

He explains that, while Sofology’s online approach with customers and “cutting edge IT savviness” will be useful to DFS, Sofology will also benefit from DFS’ fulfilment infrastructure.

“The sum of the two will be very interesting,” he says. 

He adds that the deal could create “opportunities to better leverage the proposition with landlords going forward” on the 20 retail parks where they are co-located.

He also points to “two or three legacy stores with a big footprint” where there could be a chance to operate a Sofology store alongside the existing DFS.

No bad blood

Until 2015, Sofology was known as Sofaworks. After losing a brand name dispute with DFS-owned Sofa Workshop, the retailer was forced to change its name.

Today, Filby insists there’s no tension between the brands: “That was just a very straightforward business thing.

“That actually was an action taken by Sofa Workshop and handled by Sofa Workshop for very understandable reasons. It’s not been part of the conversations I’ve been having with Jason over a long period of time.”

Sofology reported full-year sales of £143m and an EBITDA loss of £2.7m in 2016, with a statutory loss before tax of £8.9m. It attributed the losses to the impact of exchange rates on and “disruption following the Sofology rebrand”.

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