FCI: Brand Story by Firdaus Nagree (CEO)

My name is Firdaus Nagree and I'm the founder and CEO of FCI London. I'm also a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, father, husband, passionate scuba diver and expert piggyback provider who has founded or funded many successful companies since 1999. 

FCI London is one of the largest luxury furniture and interior brands in the UK. We showcase over 700 of the world’s best furniture brands under 1 roof in our 30,000 sq. ft. North London showroom.

We also offer a comprehensive interior design service with a team of trained designers. As a brand and a team, our mission is to create transformative, positive spaces that contribute to the overall happiness and well-being of the people who inhabit them.

FCI: The Beginning

The story of FCI started in 1985 when an enterprising couple - aka my parents - set up a small furniture shop in the UK. In those pre-internet days, if you wanted to find gorgeous designer furniture, you had to go out on the road and find it. So that is exactly what they did.

Along with a friend who spoke Italian, they took a road trip through villages and small towns in Italy, visiting artisan furniture workshops and creating relationships with local craftsmen. They brought these products back to the UK market and called their shop Furniture Craft.

Fast forward some years to 1999, when I started my career at Accenture. I learned the basics of business strategy before returning to my roots and joining the family business. I saw a real opportunity to grow Furniture Craft from a mom-and-pop shop into something bigger and bolder; a brand that could have a global reach. Together with my business partner, I bought real estate in North London and FCI London was born. 

Finding Our Feet & Creating USPs

From the start, I knew I wanted to focus on the luxury furniture market. At FCI, we don't sell everyday furniture. We sell high-end custom pieces from some of the most exclusive brands in the world, so it's very niche.

We built up our customer base fairly quickly and expanded the business into several showrooms. When you're selling to the luxury market, there are certain expectations that you have to meet.

It goes without saying that the quality of your products must be second to none, but the same is expected of your customer service. The margin for error is very narrow when people are paying upwards of £10k for a dining table, so we had to figure out pretty quickly how to set ourselves apart from our competitors and do it in a way that would be memorable. 

We held a team brainstorm to pinpoint what we were best at and customer service kept coming up. We decided that we were really, really good at customer service and we deliberately structured the business to amplify that. I know everybody says they're good at customer service because you kind of have to!

But the key for us is that we own all the necessary moving parts in-house. From the installers to the fitters, the delivery vans, the warehousing, the admin – it's all in-house and none of it is subcontracted out. So when someone buys a custom-built wardrobe from us or if we're renovating the interior of their entire home, we own that last touch experience with them. That won us points by meeting the really high expectations of our customers and helped us set FCI apart as a brand.

Overcoming Obstacles

With every success comes a challenge or two, of course. Our first major stumbling block came in 2008 when the bank wanted to foreclose on one of our commercial buildings. My partner and I had until the end of January to come up with a load of cash and it seemed impossible.

Then in late December, we received a hail mary in the form of a new tenancy agreement that brought in the cash we needed and prevented the bank from taking the building into receivership.  

But along with the inevitable financial hiccups came some other long-term challenges that taught me a lot about the business and about myself. In those early days as a young entrepreneur and leader, I was also still learning about business and people.

Entrepreneurs face many challenges on a day-to-day basis, but I would say the primary challenge is getting the team right. It took me many years to figure out how important company culture is and how to create a positive and supportive working environment that attracted the very best people and made them want to stay.

I had to learn how to ask for help and to acknowledge that there is power in admitting that you don’t know it all.

Consolidation & Global Expansion

After some years of running several showrooms, we made the decision to consolidate them and have one big showroom in North London which doubles as our office headquarters. Today the team works in an open-plan space alongside the customer showroom which allows everyone to meet clients and builds a nice camaraderie with both our visitors and staff.

As we grew, we set our sights beyond the UK's borders. We opened a showroom in Nigeria and a back office in India and we created joint ventures in China, the Middle East and the USA. More recently, we became involved in a project in Nairobi, Kenya, where we designed a luxury villa for a big developer. 

Going global doesn't just apply to projects; it also applies to our people. I'm a big believer in finding the best people, regardless of where they are in the world. Our team comes from all over - South Africa, India, Pakistan and Romania, to name a few. And this was before the pandemic forced everyone to work differently. We structured our processes to manage remote workers in a really inclusive way, so although many people have never met face to face, they feel part of the team. 

Lockdown & Leaps Of Faith

The advent of the pandemic blindsided us and presented unprecedented challenges, as it did for so many businesses. Not being able to see and interact with our customers was tough.

Our furniture collections are real investments so in most cases, people want to come in and see samples, or at least browse the showroom and chat with someone before they commit to buying. We had to find new ways of being available to our customers by creating fully integrated online consultations where we could view someone’s space over Zoom and make furniture recommendations.

The way that our team members all mobilised to make this happen was just incredible. Every person bar none was committed to that, and it was an inspirational and humbling moment in my career. 

Out of that experience came a renewed interest in combining technology with design, something I was already exploring. I'm an innovator and I like new challenges. I'm open to trying something a little crazy even if, at first, it doesn't make sense in my industry. I've always loved technology and in these post-lockdown years, I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to harness its power to improve our customer experience. 

Giving Back

I've always believed in the concept of paying it forward. I’ve been gifted an exceptional life by God or the universe or whatever you want to call it. The way I see it, that gift comes with responsibilities. When I give back I feel good, but there’s also this sense of being part of a greater purpose.

Brands need to understand that success is more than the bottom line. It's our responsibility to use our platform and our profits to give back and invest in the future of our planet in a way that is authentic and transparent. I'm involved with two NGOs that we support through the company, YUVA Unstoppable, and WeForest.

A share of all our annual profits goes to YUVA, a charity founded in 2005 that is dedicated to transforming the lives of underprivileged children in India by feeding and educating them, primarily through transforming schools. They focus on upgrading basic infrastructure facilities in schools and providing access to modern means of teaching and learning, as well as ensuring that kids are fed so they're able to learn effectively.

I’ve been supporting YUVA for a long time because they operate at 95% efficiency, as audited by two of the biggest auditing houses in the world. That means 95% of the money raised globally goes into their projects. Their founder, Amitabh Shah, is someone I consider a friend. Despite being their chief inspiration officer, he doesn't take a salary from the organisation and many of their staff work for free. When I give my time and money to them, I know it's going to the people who need it rather than on admin costs. 

We also support an NGO called We Forest, a movement of responsible companies with a mission to conserve and restore the ecological integrity of forests and landscapes in to stop global warming in our lifetime. We help by funding the planting of trees every month.

Success & Looking Ahead

FCI is nothing without its people. I know I talk about it a lot, but I am truly, exceptionally proud of this team. When you create a tight-knit team that is supportive of one another and committed to working together towards a common goal, you have the best chance you’ll ever have of seeing success, both professionally and personally. I hope that has been as true for them as it is for me.   

I think there are a number of ways to measure success, but not all of them are of equal importance. As a company, we’ve won many different awards and we appreciate them, but at the end of the day, they’re not a true measure of success. What makes us proud and what lets us know we’ve done our job well are our many positive customer reviews. That's how we measure our success - that, and a happy, productive team who give their all and stick around for the long haul. That's how I know I'm doing my job well.