The 50-strong flooring chain backed by Sir Richard Harpin’s Growth Partner has appointed restructuring advisers, raising the prospect of store closures and redundancies as the cost-of-living squeeze continues to drag on consumer spending.
Flooring Superstore, which employs around 300 people from its Bishop Auckland headquarters in County Durham, has drafted in Begbies Traynor and the restructuring arm of Santander to weigh its options. People familiar with the matter said a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) or a full administration are both on the table, controversial routes that typically squeeze landlords and suppliers while preserving the equity of incumbent owners and senior creditors.
The retailer was co-founded in 2012 by Dan Foskett and sells vinyl, laminate and wood flooring alongside artificial grass through its branded showrooms and online channels. Growth Partner, the investment vehicle established by Harpin, the entrepreneur behind home emergency repair group HomeServe, backed the business in 2020 with a £5 million injection that allowed Foskett to crystallise a portion of his shareholding. He retains a 22 per cent stake, while Growth Partner holds 25 per cent. The remainder is split between three individual investors.
Harpin, who last year published “How to Make a Billion in Nine Steps”, focuses on British and European retail names primed for scale. His portfolio includes pizza oven specialist Gozney and bathroom retailer Easy Bathrooms. However, several Growth Partner-backed businesses have collapsed in recent years, among them Crafters’ Companion, co-founded by Dragons’ Den investor Sara Davies, and Yorkshire-based Keelham Farm Shop.
Flooring Superstore was a pandemic winner, riding the wave of home-improvement spending while consumers were confined to their properties. That tailwind reversed sharply once lockdowns eased, as the chain was forced to absorb spiralling energy and raw material costs and unwind the additional capacity it had built. The cost-of-living crisis has since hammered demand for big-ticket household refurbishments.
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