Funky Chunky Furniture

A case study by Kevin Johnston, Managing Director
September 2021

What do you do?

Design, manufacture and online retailer of “Funky Chunky” Furniture ranges.

Why did you contact us? What problems were you experiencing?

Funky Chunky Furniture had been trading for 4 years when we approached Graham Sleep, it was based in a small extended garage with a turnover of £500k p.a., however with large ambitions. The process to move to larger premises was underway but we knew we had to make changes to cope with demand but what, where and when were new problems facing us.

It begged the question from gaining this knowledge, what if we could utilise someone with significantly more business wisdom than ourselves to take us to the next level (whatever that looked like) so it was time to reach out for some help and advice.

We approached Graham Sleep at this time to see if he could help us move in the right direction to enable us to cope with the growing demands and future thoughts.

What if we could utilise someone with significantly more business wisdom than ourselves to take us to the next level?

Kevin Johnston

The results speak for themselves. Since meeting Graham and IAG we have seen almost 10x growth in 4 years. From dealing with an individual’s concerns to detailed financial planning, IAG have proven they are there to support us, and me in particular, ensuring we understand where our strengths lie, whilst ensuring the final decision is mine. I am probably a different business owner than when we engaged as whatever they do it is to make us self-sufficient in doing it. The fact that they were willing to risk their own fees based on their capability to deliver tells you everything you need to know about them, giving me a great level of confidence. From their past successes, you can tell that they are quietly confident in who they are and what they do, and this has now rubbed off onto myself and will allow me to take a greater lead for the next phases of growth.

Kevin Johnston

How did IAG help to resolve this?

In the 4 years we had been trading we had gained so much experience and knowledge about running our business, but we knew continued growth in our current state was not going to be sustainable.

Since engaging with Graham (and taking up the IAG Floating Board Support) the business has grown by nearly 10x in turnover, whilst maintaining consistent levels of profitability. Even when we faced this being challenged, their support from a strategic sales, financial, operations and people perspective and the challenge they have brought in seeing risks early has allowed us to maintain year-on-year growth and supported us. Over the three years of support we have stabilised in a new facility, positioned and developed our brand, recruited and developed a leadership team, and employ just under 50 people now, we are also launching a new ERP system and have further developed systems around cost control to have a stable base to further growth. We did all this without bringing in external investment which would have been an easy option.

What benefits has the programme brought you to company?

I have covered a lot of this above but we had also previously considered the option of an NED to help us with this, which would have been a big commitment and the terms could vary vastly. IA Growth on the other hand had a business model unique to what we had seen before and their approach suited us very well, providing us with the equivalent of 3 NEDs for what you would expect for on-boarding one. It was a no brainer.

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