My Big Idea: Asad Shamim, Furniture in Fashion

Hi Asad! What's your elevator pitch?

Furniture in Fashion is a UK online furniture retailer I founded in 2007. We sell modern, contemporary furniture for every room in the home, from sofas and beds to dining sets and home office pieces. Our prices are affordable, and we offer free delivery to most UK postcodes. Unlike many pure online players, we run our own warehouse and showroom in Bolton, and we work directly with more than 30 factories to create our own-brand designs. Cutting out the middleman means we can offer unique, modern furniture at genuinely affordable prices. Nearly two decades on, we've served more than 500,000 customers, and we're still independent.

Why does the market need it?

UK furniture has long been split in two. At one end are high-street names with big overheads and prices to match. At the other are marketplace sellers you can't see, touch or call when something goes wrong.

We sit in between. Customers get contemporary design at fair prices, with the reassurance of a real business behind it: our own stock, our own warehouse, a showroom they can visit and a team they can speak to. Furniture is a considered purchase. People want style, but they also want to trust that the sofa will arrive on time and look like the picture. That combination is still surprisingly rare online.

There's also a design gap. Much of what's sold online is the same generic stock, resold by dozens of retailers under different names. We design some of our own ranges with our partner factories, so customers get pieces they won't find everywhere else, at prices the middleman model can't match.

Where is the business today?

We're an established, independent retailer with nearly 20 years of trading behind us. Today the business includes:

• 500,000+ customers served across the UK
• Warehouse and showroom in Bolton, so we control stock and delivery
• 30+ partner factories producing our own-brand designs, alongside thousands of products
• B2B and wholesale supply for trade customers
• A registered UK trademark protecting the Furniture in Fashion name

What made you think there was money in this?

I started Furniture in Fashion in 2007 from a warehouse ans showroom in Bolton. At the time, most people still bought furniture in showrooms. I believed they'd happily buy online if we could offer good design at fair prices, and deliver it reliably. I also wanted to build something lasting: a business that would employ people locally for the long term.

The early years were a crash course. I learned logistics, supplier management, credit, currency risk, digital marketing and warehousing, often all at once. We did it through a recession, exchange-rate swings and volatile freight costs.

The gap in the market was trust. Competitors had either great prices with poor service, or good service at prices most families couldn't stretch to. So we built the business around closing that gap: our own stock, our own warehouse and our own designs with other furniture suppliers.

What's your biggest strength?

Control of the whole journey. Many online furniture sellers never touch the product. We do. We partner directly with more than 30 factories to develop our own-brand designs, and we run our own warehouse. That means we decide on design and quality, keep stock levels steady and control delivery. Those are the things that make or break a furniture purchase.

For the FIF Branded products buying direct is our biggest price advantage. With no importer or wholesaler taking a cut, the savings go straight to the customer. That's how we offer unique, modern designs at affordable prices without compromising on quality.

The second strength is longevity. We've traded through the 2008 crash, Brexit, a pandemic and a cost-of-living squeeze. Each one taught us to stay lean and adapt quickly. Nearly 20 years of customer data and supplier relationships is very hard for a newcomer to copy.

Finally, we protect the brand. Furniture in Fashion is a registered UK trademark, which matters more than ever now that fake pages try to borrow established names.

What is the secret to making the business work?

The main challenge in online furniture is logistics. Bulky items, two-person deliveries and damage in transit all eat margin fast. One bad delivery can undo the work of a great product page.

Our answer was to own the parts that matter. By running our own warehouse, we check stock before it goes out and keep control of the customer experience right to the doorstep.

The biggest lesson from nearly 20 years is that relationships carry you through hard times. When recession or freight costs hit, it was our suppliers, logistics partners and banks who kept us moving. Look after those relationships in the good years, because you'll need them in the bad ones. Also, never underestimate the gap between a plan and its execution. That gap is where most businesses win or lose.

My advice to other entrepreneurs: find the part of your business that customers worry about most, and own it, even when outsourcing looks cheaper. And keep reinvesting in your platform. The website you launched with won't carry you through the next decade.

How do you market the company?

We're a digital-first business, so marketing is a mix of paid, organic and, increasingly, AI.

• Search ads: Google Shopping puts individual products in front of people ready to buy, while search ads point to category pages for broader searches.
• SEO: we publish practical, room-by-room advice for real UK homes. We work hard on technical health, such as site speed and structured data, because Google rewards it.
• AI search visibility: more shoppers now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews for advice, so we write content that answers questions clearly enough to be quoted.
• Social: Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, using lifestyle imagery that shows furniture in real, lived-in rooms.
• Automation: we built an in-house content pipeline that uses AI for social posts and product imagery, replacing an expensive outside service.

My advice: don't put all your eggs in Google's basket. Split your effort between ranking, AI visibility and fixing technical issues. Search is changing faster than at any point since we started.

What funding do you have? Is it enough?

Furniture in Fashion has been built without outside investors. We've grown by reinvesting profits, which has kept us independent and disciplined. That also means every investment, like our current platform upgrade, has to earn its place.

Tell us about the business model

We sell direct to consumers online, with a smaller trade and wholesale arm. Revenue comes from:

• Online retail: the bulk of sales, through our own website
• Own-brand range: designed with our 30+ partner factories and bought direct. With no middleman margin, prices stay low for customers and margins stay healthy for us
• Showroom and clearance: walk-in sales and warehouse clearance at our Bolton site
• B2B and wholesale: supplying trade customers

The main overheads are stock, warehousing, delivery and digital advertising.. Offering PayPal Credit and Pay in 3 helps customers spread the cost of bigger purchases, which lifts average order value.

What were you doing before?

I studied Accounting and Finance at the University of Salford, which gave me a solid grounding in the numbers. I had a chain of fashion stores in the north west of the UK. I launched Furniture in Fashion in 2007 and have run it ever since.

Alongside the business, my work now extends into international business development and cross-border investment. I'm particularly interested in strengthening commercial links between the UK, Pakistan and the Gulf. I was recognised at the British Muslim Awards in 2024. I also spent five years campaigning to secure the UK's first professional boxing licence for a boxer with Type 1 diabetes. It took medical evidence, work with regulators and persistence through repeated refusals. Today that door is open rather than closed, and the campaign shaped how I approach every challenge since. My advisory roles now include Senior Advisor to HRH Sheikh Ahmad Bin Faisal Al Qassimi and Chairman of the Advisory Board at OM International.

Are there any technologies you've found useful?

AI has changed how we work more than anything since we went online:

• Claude (AI) & Chat GTP: Product copy and FAQs to our brand rules
• Make.com and Airtable: automate our content pipeline from idea to published article
• AI image tools Leonardo, : create lifestyle room scenes for social media
• Google Search Console and structured data: keep us visible in both traditional search and AI answers
• PayPal Credit / Pay in 3: flexible payment options that help customers with bigger purchases

The lesson: you don't need a big team to compete with big retailers anymore. With the right tools, a small team can produce content at a scale that used to need an agency.

What is the future vision?

In the short term, we want to finish our platform upgrade. That means a faster, smarter website with better search, personal recommendations and one-tap checkout, while keeping everything customers and Google already know about us.

Longer term, I want to grow our own-brand range and take Furniture in Fashion beyond the UK. My work across the UK, Pakistan and the Gulf has shown me there is real demand for well-designed, affordable British-run furniture brands in those markets. The goal is to stay independent and keep our customers' trust while we grow.

Beyond the business, I don't want a monument. I'd rather leave a way of working that others carry forward: keep your word, treat suppliers and customers as partners, and build something that can thrive without you.

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