Mrs Chapman (Mum) and her mum (Gran) started Fern Furnishing at our Saltaire shop after the sudden death of her father in 1969, The shop had been previously  used as a fish and chip shop by Granddad during the war and has been in the family ever since.

We started selling second hand furniture bought from auction, with mum and dad’s £1000 savings, which launched the business. We started buying transit damaged furniture from Manufacturers, which Dad and John (Big Brother) repaired at home in the garage for Re-sale at half price. This soon took off and meant John became full time staff, burning the midnight oil to keep up to demand (and still is 38 years later).

Dad was still working for the gas board by day and for Mum at night. But that soon changed and Dad joined the firm full time. As stock grew we had to move to larger premises. So a 2000 sq ft warehouse was rented in Shipley.  In 1976 Ian (the good-looking one) left school to complete the family business. As all good things come to an end, so did the transit damaged furniture. We had been retailing mainly seconds from ex- catalogue stock; the main stay of our business had been bedroom furniture.

We then started buying new furniture from local manufacturers but soon got fed up of being let down with late deliveries and poor build quality. After we constructed a makeshift circular saw, at our warehouse in Shipley, the three of us put the knowledge we had gained over the years repairing furniture, to producing our own.  We then sold it alongside the bought-in furniture, customers were happy to pay a few more pounds for our product. This gave us the incentive to invest in bigger machinery and expand the manufacturing side to produce a full range of freestanding bedroom furniture.

As the years passed, and fitted furniture started to gain popularity, the demand for freestanding started to drop. So, we then entered the fitted kitchen market. Running along side the bedroom furniture, the kitchens sold well and with it came more investment in machinery and staff. After several years fitting kitchens, we had started to get more and more people requesting their bedrooms be fitted.

In 1992, we made the decision to leave the very labour intensive fitted kitchen market and concentrate on the bedrooms. We needed a showroom to display our fitted bedroom furniture and started to look to buy our own factory / showroom. In 1993, we moved into our present factory in Eccleshill, Bradford and promptly converted the large offices into showrooms. In May of that year we sadly lost Dad, whose claim to fame was he slept with the boss. Once open the showroom soon started to bring in the work and with it more investment in machinery.

The shop at saltiare is still open today and is looked after by Mum. We have now been joined in the firm by the third generation of family, with two of our sons, Dan and Phil.