Reid Furniture has become the latest victim of the consumer spending squeeze as it revealed plans to close its Hillington warehouse.
This deals another blow to its Renfrewshire heartland, where it closed its factory four years ago.
A spokesman said: "We are proposing to close the Reid Furniture warehouse over the coming months. Our retail store in Hillington is not affected."
Reid, originally founded in Hillington as a furniture manufacturer and wholesaler, has 13 stores. It said it was proposing to consolidate all warehousing at its existing depot in Livingston, and was working with staff to negotiate relocation packages.
The spokesman added: "As we are currently in a consultation period and following due process, we cannot confirm specific details at the moment.
"Reid Furniture is an established employer in the Hillington area and we are doing everything we can to secure future employment for our valued employees."
Reid Furniture was founded in 1970 by Sam Reid, chairman until 2006 when he sold for £10 million to a management buy-out led by Alan Marnie. Two years later the business was snapped up by Steinhoff of Germany, a global giant in the furniture sector whose UK businesses include Bensons, Bed Shed, Cargo and Harveys.
Mr Marnie was moved from Glasgow to London to run the combined Harveys/Reid operation but left in 2010, at a time when the business was said to be recovering after a turnaround period and amid the demise of competitors such as MFI.
Soon afterwards Harveys/Reid closed seven stores and pulled out of selling beds, and last autumn Reid launched a high-profile media campaign aimed at relaunching the brand.
It is now part of a UK entity called JD Carpenter, based in Gloucestershire, which in its last published accounts for 2010 reported turnover down from £36m to £30.7m and pre-tax profit slashed from £2.45m to £924,000.
Reid declined to comment on current trading or future employment prospects.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article