News & Views

A century-old furniture maker known for its “cool classic” designs is championing “hybridised” production – splitting manufacturing between high- and low-wage locations to combine the benefits of both. For many manufacturers, this represents a more sophisticated way to remain competitive than simply “offshoring” production abroad or bringing factory operations back onshore.

Ercol, which is family owned, has used hybridised production to balance its UK and overseas operations which – along with investment in design and training – has enabled it to prosper in difficult markets. Over the past 30 years, other well-known furniture names have either disappeared or cut back UK production drastically due to pressures including a big rise in low-cost imports, lack of financial support and lacklustre management.

Ercol is based in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, near the historic furniture centre of High Wycombe, where it was started in 1920 by Lucian Ercolani, an Italian craftsman and entrepreneur. "Our goal has been to find the right blend between craft and tradition, and technology and innovation,” says Henry Tadros, Ercol’s chairman and grandson of its founder. “We are proud we are still in business and have found a strategy to grow.”

The hybridised system of production is not new but has become an increasingly valuable approach for many manufacturers in western Europe and the US where wages and other costs are high. Rather than outsource all production to lower-cost regions, it often makes more sense to use a more flexible approach that harnesses the design, technology and customisation skills found in more advanced economies. The additional costs that result are offset by relocating some production processes to lower-wage economies.

Ercol’s philosophy carries lessons for other firms - even much bigger ones - seeking ways to grow. The 130-strong company had sales in 2022 of £20.3m, recording a small operating profit, against losses in previous years. Ercolani’s descendants continue to own and run the company, with Henry Tadros taking over as chairman in 2022 from his father Edward who held the top job for 29 years.

Over its history, Ercol has built a reputation for its furniture, using a mix of classic home-furnishing styles and more modern ideas. It has retained a following for a signature “show wood” form in which the underlying wood is exposed, sometimes behind cushions or other soft furnishing material.

Lesley Graham, a director of Sterling Home, an independent retailer with a long connection to Ercol, has been “very impressed” with the company’s resilience. “Like all manufacturing businesses, they have had to adapt and look to other markets to perform certain tasks for them, but their bigger view was always to maintain a manufacturing capability in the UK. Additionally I think they have been clever in exploiting their heritage and have taken advantage of their reputation for quality and hand build.”

As well as its wood products such as tables, dining chairs and cupboards, Ercol supplies upholstery-based items such as sofas and armchairs. Upholstered items are generally bulky and expensive to ship. This gives UK producers a cost advantage over importers and helps to protect domestic manufacturing. Other established UK furniture brands such as Parker Knoll and G Plan continue to make upholstery products in the UK but have withdrawn from the wood-based end of the business.

These points are noted by James Barker, managing director of Barker and Stonehouse, a long-established retailer that started selling Ercol products in 1948. “It is a great credit to Ercol that it is one of the only remaining British manufacturers of cabinet [wood-based] furniture left in the UK,” Barker says.

About half the company’s production is now done outside the UK, with the rest in its home plant – where manufacturing processes are more likely to involve a high degree of automation or craft skills that are more difficult to replicate elsewhere. As well as reducing costs, the change to hybrid production has brought added flexibility and made it possible for Ercol to offer a broader set of products. In its offshoring, the company stresses its careful approach. “We have been very selective of who we work with [in offshoring],” says Henry Tadros. “Even though we outsource a lot more of our production than we used to, we feel we have maintained the Ercol DNA."

Over the next few years, the company could adapt its manufacturing plans further. Global trends linked to Covid - and Brexit -related supply disruptions plus the war in Ukraine are likely to lead Ercol to switch more of its production to the UK. “Some of the weaknesses in the globalisation model have given us an opportunity [for more UK production],” says Ian Peers, operations director. Already, says David Finch, Ercol’s managing director, the company is taking steps to “bring some work back to the factory that was previously done in China”. Such moves are likely to be introduced slowly but may in time give a modest boost to employment at the UK factory.

Other elements in the Ercol plan for growth have involved refreshed designs. In 2018, it introduced in the L.Ercolani furniture range that added some design tweaks to its historic style. The range currently generates sales of about £2m a year.

And in keeping with Ercol’s long tradition of working with external designers, its five-strong in-house design team, led by creative director Rachel Galbraith, collaborated on the L.Ercolani range with outsiders including Norm Architects, a firm in Copenhagen, and Tomoko Azumi, a Japanese-born designer based in London.

Rural town carves out a reputation

Ercol’s long links with High Wycombe, a small town in the Chiltern Hills near London, underlines the area’s historical importance in furniture manufacturing. Due to the abundant wood from local forests, production of furniture – especially chairs – took off in a big way during the 19th century. By 1875, an estimated 4,700 chairs a day were being made in the Buckinghamshire town, with several hundred furniture makers in evidence.

Ercol’s founder, Lucian Ercolani, set up his company, originally called Furniture Industries, in High Wycombe in 1920, after a spell in London learning about the furniture trade. He got to know two other luminaries of the business – Ebenezer Gomme, who had started his furniture company in High Wycombe in 1898, and Harry Parker, part of the influential Parker family that was behind the famous Parker Knoll furniture band.

Ercol continued its association with the town until 2002 when it moved to a new factory in nearby Princes Risborough, a key move in its plan to give itself a chance to prosper in the coming decades.

Gomme’s company, meanwhile, had a large factory in High Wycombe until the early 1990s. The business lives on today under the name G Plan, now based in Nottinghamshire where it concentrates on making upholstery-based furniture such as settees and armchairs. Parker Knoll – which started life in London 1869 but had a factory in High Wycombe from the 1920s – also continues to make upholstery products at a factory in Melksham, Wiltshire.

Both G Plan and Parker Knoll are owned by Sofa Brands International, a holding company for several furniture manufacturers. Other well-known High Wycombe furniture names that are now gone include W.M.Birch, James Elliott & Sons and Joynson Holland. However several smaller firms continue to make furniture in the town, including Greengate Furniture, William Hands and Evans of High Wycombe.