Famous furniture chain once popular with millions of Brits is making a comeback
Flat pack furniture chain MFI enjoyed booming sales in the 70s and 80s - and is now being revived by its new owners
Famous furniture firm MFI is making another comeback - 18 years after its collapse.
Online bathroom business Victorian Plumbing, which now owns the brand, announced a “reinvented” MFI will launch in the first half of next year.
Mark Radcliffe, founder and boss of Victorian Plumbing, said: “I am very excited about the upcoming re-invention of MFI, allowing us to tap in to more of the £20billion UK homewares market.”
MFI - or Mullard Furniture Industries - started in 1964 selling surplus government stock after the Second World War, originally as a mail order business.
Sales boomed, boosted by Tory leader Margaret Thatcher’s sell-off of council homes, leading the firm to open a wave of stores across the country selling flat-pack furniture long before the arrival of Swedish rival Ikea.
At one stage it was the UK’s biggest furniture retailer, with millions of families flocking to its branches when they were sprucing up their homes.
It was said that, at it peak, one in three Sunday lunches was made in an MFI kitchen, and 60% of children were conceived in an MFI bedroom. So popular was MFI that the firm recruited stars from hit soap opera Coronation Street to branch openings.
But competition and the credit crunch saw MFI collapse in 2008, with the loss of 1,200 jobs. At the time of its demise its store estimate had shrunk from more than 200 around 111.
The brand was later bought then relaunched as a website-only business in 2011, but it ceased. Victorian Plumbing got the MFI brand and website address when it snapped-up similarly sounding Victoria Plum, which went out of business last year.
Sources said the relaunched MFI was likely to stock kitchen and bedroom ranges, as well as sofas, with the brand itself given a refresh. Around £3million is being pumped into the venture, which will be houses in two standalone warehouses in Skelmersdale, Lancashire.
Victorian Plumbing, which is also based in Skelmersdale, said it was braced for MFI to make a loss over the next two financial years.
