Suite dreams: how luxury sofa firm Maker&Son left its clients standing

theguardian.com:

O n the surface, the luxury furniture brand Maker&Son seems to offer the perfect retail experience, if you can afford it. Its website shows a young woman with her eyes shut, resting on a handmade couch. A large sofa costs up to £11,000 and a deposit of almost £6,000 is needed to secure it. Products are made from “natural sustainable materials” and a plethora of five-star reviews appear from happy customers.

But a closer look at Maker&Son reveals a different story – one of contested insolvency, allegations of debt owed to suppliers, unhappy customers and former staff claiming they have not been paid pension contributions. Those unhappy customers include some high-profile names, such as the former adult film actor Mia Khalifa, who claims to have lost thousands, and rants at the “heathens” who took £4,000 from her for a cloud chair.

Maker&Son was founded in 2018 by Alex Willcock and Felix Conran, grandson of the Habitat founder Sir Terence Conran. It started out selling high-end ethically produced furniture from a farm in West Sussex, employing about 70 staff.

Yet despite rapid growth and expansion in Australia and the US, raising millions of pounds from private equity investor Magenta Partners and reaching a reported £55m valuation, the business struggled to keep up with orders. Hurt by high manufacturing costs and the impact of Covid on supply chains and manufacturing, it slumped to an operating loss of £1.9m for the year to the end of February 2022, and failed to secure fresh funding.

Then, late last summer or autumn, Maker&Son was sold to a serial acquirer of companies, Jack Mason, whose company Inc & Co is controlled by an entity registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands.

But the deal soon ran into a