Icelandic banking crisis hits furniture retailer; £2.5m written off

14th July 2009 | independents | One of the North’s most profitable furniture retailers has written off an Icelandic deposit of almost £2.5m.

Barkers of Northallerton, which habitually records a pre-tax margin of about 20%, made a pre-tax loss of £515,000 in the year to the end of January this year. In the three prior years, the two store retailer returned profits ranging from £1.98m to £2.46m on sales of between £10.76m and £11.71m.

No turnover figure was lodged with Companies House for 2009, but without the write-off the retailer would have returned profits of about £2m – suggesting it is coping better than most with the recession.

The firm said the market continues to be challenging and it faces strong competition, but that it would continue to invest in the shopping experience for its customers.

Barkers operates from a department store in the centre of Northallerton and a dedicated 40,000sq ft home furnishing store on the outskirts.