Customade restructuring saves jobs but closes Virtuoso

The Customade Group has announced a major restructuring plan aimed at ensuring the long-term stability of its key trading brands and protecting hundreds of jobs, though not all parts of the business could be saved.

The company’s latest statutory accounts, filed in October 2023 for the financial year ending December 2022, revealed significant financial pressures stemming from historic trading losses and an urgent need to refinance senior banking facilities by the end of December 2024. In response to challenging market conditions, the Group implemented operational changes to cut costs and enhance service, laying the groundwork for improved sales across its trading businesses.

“Over the past two years, the market for our products has been contracting, and we’ve witnessed numerous businesses within our sector struggle and ultimately go into insolvency,” said Customade Group CEO Will Gold. “Our goal throughout this process was to secure the trading future of as much of the Group’s previous operations as we could and thereby protect the jobs of as many of our employees as possible.”

The restructuring culminated in the sale of assets and trade for four of the Group’s brands—Polyframe, Stevenswood, REAL, and Atlas—in two separate transactions. These sales have preserved the continuity of those brands and safeguarded over 80% of the company’s workforce. However, not all parts of the business survived the restructuring.

The Virtuoso brand, a key component of the Group, was not sold as part of the transactions and will cease trading. In addition, a small number of redundancies were confirmed in Group-level roles and within certain Stevenswood branches and support functions.

“I am pleased that through these transactions we have been able to secure so many jobs going forwards,” Gold said, “but I am deeply disappointed that we were unable to find a solution that preserved the Virtuoso business and avoided the other staff redundancies. I am hugely grateful to all our staff that worked so hard and showed such commitment during a very difficult period, and for the support of our supply chain partners and valued customers.”

The Customade Group’s restructuring highlights the difficulties facing the sector amid a contracting market, but the survival of its core brands offers a measure of hope for the company’s future.