Sofa Workshop, the furniture retailer, has been sold by administrator Leonard Curtis.

Neil Bennett, Michael Healy and Paul Reeves, the administrators at restructuring specialist Leonard Curtis, were appointed as administrators to the business on 22 January 2009.

Part of the business, which had a turnover of £30m in the year to 31 May 2008, has been sold to Erewash Upholstery, controlled by a consortium of investors led by Andrew Cussins who founded Sofa Workshop in 1985.

The rescue deal saves 10 of its 30 shops in the UK.

The stores to be retained are those in Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Guildford, Kingston, and Tunbridge Wells. Four of the London stores are also retained: Battersea, Chiswick, King’s Road and Tottenham Court Road.

But 20 stores and the head office have been closed

Bennett said: ‘The basic idea was good but the business itself had suffered in the current economicclimate. People are neither moving nor are they investing in larger items of new furniture. The new slimmed-down organisation, backed by website and mail order seems to be the right business model for the times. We wish them every success.’

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