Press Release - 02.11.2023 - 08:00
ILVA presents turnover of 1.4 billion and sustains core ambitions
ILVA closes the financial year 2022/23 with a turnover of DKK 1.4bn and the furniture chain maintains its focus on strengthening its work with sustainability and its brand awareness in Sweden.
Today, Denmark’s largest chain of furniture stores, ILVA, presented a turnover for the past financial year of DKK 1.4bn despite of more hesitant consumer behaviour, which is rooted in lower disposable incomes due to rising inflation and interest rates. However, the bottom-line figures were affected by the challenges in the market and ILVA’s earnings before interest and tax landed at DKK -27.6m for the financial year 2022/23. In comparison, last year’s result reached DKK 1.7bn in revenues and DKK 91m in earnings before interest and tax.
”There is an array of external factors influencing our result for the year, such as increased cost and commodity prices caused by high activity levels at the end of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine among other things,” says interim CEO of ILVA, Peter Andsager.
”After a couple of years with an extraordinary focus on ensuring deliveries and continuously adapting to the changing market during Covid-19, we have been able to focus more on designing new products and improving the customer experience in our stores and webshop this past year. This puts us in an even stronger position for the coming years which we expect will also be characterised by consumer reluctance,” he adds.
Strengthening brand awareness
Despite of external challenges, ILVA has maintained its focus on expansion – this goes for the Swedish market as well, which has been under even more pressure. Here, ILVA has continued looking for suitable store locations as well as worked on increasing awareness of the ILVA brand.
”It has not been possible to find the right locations which suit our concept this past financial year, but there is movement in the retail market at the moment which could potentially present new opportunities, so we are staying calm,” Peter Andsager says and adds: ”In the meantime, we are focusing our energy towards increasing brand awareness.”
To fulfil that purpose, ILVA has hired a Head of Brand for the first time, namely Bettina William Pedersen, who, among other things, will be strengthening ILVA’s position in the minds of the consumers – in Sweden as well as Denmark.
”ILVA enjoys a very high degree of brand awareness in Denmark of around 80 percent but in a highly competitive market it takes a lot to stay present in the interest of the customers and with our new Head of Brand we are making sure that development of the ILVA-brand gets the focus necessary,” Peter Andsager says.
Goal-oriented focus on climate initiatives
In addition to brand development and awareness, the financial year 2022/23 has been centred around strengthening ILVA’s focus on the sustainable agenda. In March 2023, the company signed Climate Alliance Aarhus’ Commitment Paper; an agreement which supports Aarhus Municipality in reaching the city council’s goal of carbon neutrality in 2030. Later that same month, ILVA brought a new, experienced sustainability consultant on board, Morten Hadsund Brodde, who has a background in FSC Denmark. In the latest financial year, FSC recognized ILVA’s work in communicating and making FSC visible in stores as well as online which ILVA received a 2022 FSC® Brand Award for.
In August 2023, ILVA cemented the company’s focus on the climate agenda by signing up to the internationally recognized Science Based Target initiative (SBTi), through which ILVA will set reduction goals for its emission of greenhouse gases according to the latest climate science and the Paris Agreement.
”We have a clear goal of reducing our emission of greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2030 and thereby contribute to limiting the rise in global temperatures,” Peter Andsager states.
About ILVA
ILVA is the biggest Danish chain of furniture stores with 39 stores in Denmark and four in Sweden. ILVA is owned by Lars Larsen Group.
