Finance for Furniture Manufacturers
Commercial finance for the furniture and upholstery trade, from a broker rooted in Long Eaton, the home of British upholstery. We understand how these businesses work, because we come from where they are made.
Rooted where furniture is made
Long Eaton is the home of British upholstery. More than 50 furniture manufacturers and suppliers work in and around the town, employing more than 2,700 people, with a combined turnover of over £250 million a year, and exporting to more than 60 countries. Sofas and chairs made here sit in the finest hotels, embassies and homes around the world.
Goodman Corporate Finance is based here, in the middle of it. We are not a national broker with a furniture line on a list. We are a firm from the town that makes the furniture, and we have spent years alongside the businesses that make it.
We understand the business, and how to fund it
Furniture manufacturing is a demanding business to fund. You buy frames, foam, springs and fabric, and pay for skilled labour, long before the finished pieces are sold and the retailer pays you. Add rising material and energy costs, a real skills challenge, and competition from imports, and cash flow is under constant pressure even when the order book is full.
That is where the right finance makes the difference, and where knowing the trade matters. In practice, it usually means one or more of these:
Asset finance
Working capital and invoice finance
Working capital and invoice finance
For the machinery and equipment a workshop runs on.
Working capital and invoice finance
Working capital and invoice finance
Working capital and invoice finance
To bridge the gap between making the furniture and being paid for it.
Trade finance
Property and growth funding
Property and growth funding
Where materials or components are bought from abroad, or a large retail order needs funding to fulfil.
Property and growth funding
Property and growth funding
Property and growth funding
To expand, buy premises, or invest in capacity.
We work out which of these fits, structured around how a furniture business actually trades, not forced into a standard template.
More than a funder
Our involvement in the sector goes beyond arranging finance. Paul Goodman co-chairs the Long Eaton Business Partnership and works to put the town’s furniture cluster into the national conversation, including with MPs and Ministers on the structural challenges the industry faces. His view is a simple one: British furniture manufacturing has a future worth investing in, and the businesses that make it deserve a finance partner who believes that too.
In practice
The mistake we see most often is one of these needs being met with the wrong product, usually a short-term loan taken in a hurry, which then makes the next facility harder to arrange. Our work is to put the right facilities in the right order, and to explain each one plainly before anything is signed.
Paul ran a joinery manufacturing business for six years before he arranged finance for anyone else. He knows what a quiet January does to cash flow. That is the experience a furniture manufacturer speaks to when they call.
Talk to us about your business
If you make furniture and you need finance that fits how you work, talk to us. You will be dealing with a firm that knows the trade, from the town that built it.
Copyright - Goodman Corporate Consultancy Ltd
Goodman Corporate Finance is a trading style of Goodman Corporate Consultancy Ltd. Company no 5364029 Registered in England and Wales.
Registered office: 5 Prospect Place, Millennium Way, Pride Park, Derby, DE24 8HG.
Goodman Corporate Consultancy Limited is an FCA authorised Credit Broker and not a lender.
We typically receive a payment (s) or other benefits from the finance provider if you decide to enter into an agreement with them depending on the chosen provider and their commission or incentive models. Different lenders pay different amounts depending on different commission models. Further details of the commission model, calculation and amount will be disclosed to you throughout your customer journey.
Goodman Corporate Consultancy Ltd is Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under number 733340.
Goodman Corporate Finance is registered with the ICO no. Z1828753.
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