Land of Leather hurt by weak consumer confidence

Furniture retailer Land of Leather remained in the doldrums today after revealing further gloomy trading figures.

The leather-sofa specialist said like-for-like sales orders for the 23 days to January 27 were down 15.4% while total sales orders were off 6.3%.

The company recently issued a profit warning when it said the first nine days of the sale, which started on Boxing Day, had been “significantly below the board’s expectations”.

The company blamed the credit crunch for lowering consumer confidence, which in turn has hit spending since November last year.

It has also warned it expects the “challenging market conditions” to continue for some time.

The company’s shares took another tumble today having declined from more than 340p at start of 2007 to a low of 55p earlier this month.

Land of Leather also revealed that like-for-like sales for the 26 weeks to January 28 fell 16.1% with total sales down 4.2%.

Poor trading in January hits Land of Leather because about a quarter of its annual sales are made in a period it describes as “very important”.

It has warned that profits for August 2008 will be significantly below those of last year and stressed it is taking all action possible to reduce operating costs.

The UK-based company, which opened its first store in 1997, has 108 outlets across the UK and Ireland.

In September the company reported full-year pre-tax profits up 55% at £16m (€21.4m) on revenues of £240m (€321.5m).