Last week, the curtains finally came down on Made.com. The British online furniture emporium entered administration on Wednesday (9 November), axing more than 500 jobs and leaving thousands of orders in limbo.
The collapse of a major retailer would be notable at any time, but Made was seen as one of Britain's biggest digital success stories of recent years. For much of the 2010s, no stylish millennial home was complete without one of its luxe velvet sofas, rattan lamps or mid-century cabinets. Buoyed by bumper sales during the Covid lockdowns, the company went public in 2021 at a £775m valuation.
So how did Next end up snapping up its website and intellectual property for just £3.4m barely a year later? As Made’s chief executive, Nicola Thompson, said in a statement this week, the company had been built for “a world of low inflation, stable consumer demand, reliable and cost-efficient global supply chains and limited geopolitical volatility. That world vanished… and we could not pivot fast enough.”