Family firm crowned best furniture retailer

A furniture retailer has polished off a successful summer with two industry accolades.

Bury St Edmunds-based home department store business Glasswells was voted Best Furniture Retailer with three or more stores by readers of trade magazine Interiors Monthly, and was named Member of the Year by independent non-food buying group the Associated Independent Stores (AIS).

It is the fifth time the family company have won an AIS award within the last seven years, competing against around 300 other retailers ranging from single high street shops to flagship department stores across the UK, Ireland and the Channel Islands.

Businesses vying for the AIS award were judged on a range of criteria from the professionalism and product knowledge of staff, customer service and quality of displays through to the efficiency of the accounts and buying departments, warehousing operation and overall perception and shopping experience provided to customers.

Glasswells owns large home department stores in Bury St. Edmunds and Ipswich offering furniture and accessories, as well as smaller stores in Haverhill and Saffron Walden.

Managing director Paul Glasswell said: “We’re over the moon to have been voted best retailer by two such influential organisations within our trade.

“The various suppliers that voted for us visit hundreds of retailers across the country and clearly they consider that the job we do is a very professional, efficient and good one. Our staff continue to set very high standards in the way that we go about our business and it is gratifying to know that all the very hard efforts we make to ensure Glasswells is a premier retailer are being recognised.”