Headlam — why you should never trust them again

# Headlam — why you should never trust them again

Let’s face it, no-one in the industry likes Headlam anyway.

That is frustration talking, of course. There are customers who want it to survive and good people who have worked hard there. But for an independent flooring business that has paid for goods, received nothing and then chased an agreed refund into administration, the appeals for loyalty are wearing very thin indeed.

I run Cavendish deVere. We are still £3,385.88 out of pocket over a Crucial Trading order. We refunded our own customer. Headlam agreed the amount it owed us. What followed was a tour of departments, explanations about payment processes and, eventually, an appeal from the chief executive for us to keep putting business their way.

You can probably imagine how that landed.

Our experience sits alongside a much older problem: a supplier that appears to have forgotten why independent retailers dealt with it in the first place.

Harvey Shaw has publicly described putting more than £150,000 a year through Headlam, only to conclude that the relationship was no longer worth keeping after it opened an account with a shop almost on his doorstep. He had its stands removed from his three stores. His complaint is about commercial loyalty, rather than an unpaid refund, but the point is recognisable: customers are expected to support a supplier that they feel has stopped supporting them. [Harvey Shaw’s account of Headlam].

Under an earlier Interiors Monthly report, Roy Povey criticised management for disregarding independent retailers and pursuing trade counters that competed with them. Andrew Griscti-Perry highlighted the employees facing redundancy as a consequence of management mistakes. These are their assessments, but they show that the anger predates this administration. The same report quoted then interim executive chairman Stephen Bird acknowledging “strategic and commercial mistakes”. Headlam’s own leadership therefore recognised that the economy was only part of the explanation. [Interiors Monthly report and comments].

There are also public signs of problems resembling ours. A publicly indexed comment beneath N Gregory Flooring’s Facebook post describes an undelivered order and a promised refund still outstanding weeks later. I cannot verify that person’s transaction or calculate an industry loss total from a comment thread. But it is another reported experience of the very issue the corporate messaging barely touches. [N Gregory Flooring discussion].

For me, Crucial Trading was the one part of the offer that gave us a compelling reason to deal with Headlam. Its natural flooring, textures and designs offered something distinctive. Elsewhere, for the jobs and customers we serve, I generally saw comparable products available from other suppliers at similar prices.

Kersaint Cobb deserves a mention for its natural fibres, although, in my judgement, Fibre Flooring and Alternative Flooring offer similar choices. I would not struggle to fill that gap. JHS has a place on the commercial side, but again, I do not see anything sufficiently special to make it indispensable. As for the rest, I do not rate the offer highly enough to believe their disappearance would leave a meaningful hole in our market. Customers would still have plenty of flooring to choose from.

That is my commercial judgement. A long catalogue and a collection of acquired names do not, by themselves, make a business indispensable. Headlam promotes its breadth, expertise, delivery network and exclusive ranges. Those are the advantages it claims. They have to work in practice. [Headlam’s description of its offer].

A distributor earns its place by having the stock, getting it where it needs to be and sorting things out when they go wrong. If those basics fall apart, what exactly is the customer paying for? In our case, the service failed at the point when we needed it most. As far as I am concerned, that is a business failing its purpose.

We asked for a refund because the order kept being put back. We had accepted the original back-order estimate in good faith, but the expected delivery moved twice and our customer eventually had enough. We could not keep asking them to wait. We refunded them from our own funds and pursued the return of the money we had paid to Crucial Trading.

Here is what happened to us. The dates matter.

Date
What happened | We confirmed payment for an earlier Crucial Trading order, reference 68691516. This was separate from the additional order placed the following week. |
| **28 July** | We ordered a further 8.50m × 4m under order 68710314. Sales told us it was out of stock, with an estimated arrival into their premises of 6 August. We accepted that estimate and confirmed payment the same day. We knew it was a back order. |
| **August** | The expected delivery was subsequently put back twice. The additional goods did not arrive. Our client would not wait indefinitely, and we ultimately refunded the client from our own funds. |
| **1 September** | Hughie began the written refund chase following telephone contact. This was also the date Headlam announced its intention to appoint administrators. |
| **2 September** | Credit control requested invoice and order details. We supplied the requested paperwork that morning. |
| **3 September** | We were told the refund belonged with the Crucial Trading team and had been forwarded. Later that day, credit control confirmed a refund amount of **£3,385.88**, after deducting a separate £24.59 short payment from £3,410.47. We accepted within approximately nine minutes. |
| **4 September** | I chased again, saying I had been told the refund would be that day. Credit control described a weekly Friday process following management approval, with approximately three days for funds to arrive. It said a refund processed on Friday should arrive by Wednesday. It did **not** confirm that our particular refund had been approved or processed. |
| **4 September, later that afternoon** | I asked whether that meant we could expect our refund the following Wednesday. That question remained unanswered in the correspondence. |
| **7 September** | With no payment received, we sent a formal letter for Headlam’s directors, setting out the chronology and demanding cleared funds by close of business on 8 September. |
| **8 September** | Administrators were appointed to Headlam Group plc and HFD Limited. The CEO’s customer email asked for continued orders to support the restructuring. |
| **The week beginning 7 September — subsequent follow-up** | We offered a practical alternative: if they would not refund us, they could give us the carpet we had paid for. We were then told that the carpet had never been ordered in the first place. This is the explanation given to us; we have not seen their internal purchasing records. |

The order and refund details above come from our correspondence and our formal complaint. Headlam confirms the administration appointments on its own website. [Headlam administration notice](https://www.headlam.com/).

Throughout the refund chase, Hughie was telephoning daily and being passed between Crucial Trading, Mercado, Headlam Brands and Tamworth. From our end, nobody seemed willing or able to take ownership of getting the money returned.

During the week beginning 7 September, we tried another way to resolve it. If they would not return our money, they could give us the carpet we had paid for.

According to what we were then told, the carpet had never been ordered in the first place.

We had certainly placed our order and paid for it. The explanation we were given was that the carpet itself had never been ordered for supply. If that information was correct, there was nothing coming to fulfil the order whose delivery kept being postponed.

That raises an obvious question: what were those revised dates based on? We had been passing expectations on to our customer, waiting for goods and eventually paying the customer back ourselves. We now needed an explanation for why the carpet had apparently never been ordered at all.

We were discussing an agreed refund after Headlam had publicly announced its intention to appoint administrators. Yet the refund correspondence did not explain what that meant for our payment. Instead, we received an explanation of the normal Friday-to-Wednesday process, and no answer when we asked whether our money would actually arrive on that basis.

The distinction matters. I cannot say that anyone confirmed a bank transfer had been made. They did not. What I can say is that the correspondence left us chasing what appeared to be a routine refund while a far more serious situation was unfolding.

To me, that treatment felt underhand. We were given process without clarity at precisely the moment clarity mattered. I do not know what individual accounts staff had been told, or who was making the decisions above them. The failure to give us a straight answer remains the company’s failure.

The chief executive’s email made matters worse.

On 8 September, Rob Barclay thanked customers for their support and explained that Headlam would continue trading during restructuring. He wrote:

> “However, we cannot do this on our own and we need your support.”

He went on to explain that continued orders were critical to making the restructuring work.

Read that from our side of the counter. We had paid. The goods had not arrived. We had dealt with our own customer and absorbed the cost. The refund amount had been agreed. Now we were being asked to support the business again.

Where was the acknowledgement of customers with unpaid refunds? Where was the explanation for those who had paid for goods they had never received? Where was the recognition that small businesses might have already refunded their own clients and were now funding the hole themselves?

There was a general reference to questions and concerns. There was no specific acknowledgement of any of those situations, no specific apology for them, and no explanation of how those customers would be treated.

I found it completely tone-deaf. The email spent its energy explaining what customers could do for Headlam. Customers in our position needed to hear what Headlam was going to do about the money it owed us.

The commercial argument for continued trading is easy enough to understand. The announced plan envisages restructuring, refinancing and a company voluntary arrangement. A rescue may preserve jobs and business value. But an intention to rescue the company does not rebuild customer trust by itself, and the announcement does not establish what we will recover. [Headlam’s restructuring announcement].

In Darwinian business terms, my view is that this version of Headlam has been weighed, tested and found wanting. A business has to adapt to what its customers need. If it cannot supply reliably, communicate honestly about difficulties and retain the trust of the people who buy from it, it has no entitlement to their continued support simply because it is large or familiar.

I do not believe the industry should prop up the existing model out of habit. The most credible hope, to my mind, is for the stronger brands and the people with real knowledge to find a future under better ownership. Crucial Trading would be the first name I would want examined. Kersaint Cobb and JHS may also have value to a buyer, but neither changes my assessment of the group: I see little here that the market could not replace. Preserving the worthwhile parts need not mean preserving the whole structure that has brought us here.

For staff still there, my advice is blunt: polish your CV, speak to other employers and take a sound opportunity when it comes. Your skills and experience have value. You do not owe the company an open-ended commitment while your own livelihood remains uncertain. I would not gamble my family’s income on the assumption that restructuring guarantees security. Without fundamental change, I see a real risk of employees being put through further upheaval.

And the conditions ahead look unforgiving.

The Gulf conflict is beginning to look, to me, like the sort of war that keeps finding new ways to continue. The risk is a prolonged energy shock spreading through an already strained economy. This is no longer merely a hypothetical jump in oil prices: the International Energy Agency’s September report describes sharply higher crude and diesel prices, depleted inventories and an expected recovery in Middle Eastern supplies delayed until 2027. [IEA, September 2026 Oil Market Report].

Flooring is exposed on several fronts. Synthetic carpets, vinyl and LVT depend on petrochemical supply chains. PVC itself uses salt alongside oil- or gas-derived feedstocks. The exposure to petrochemicals is substantial, and energy and transport costs also reach wool, timber, natural flooring and the vans that carry them. [VinylPlus on PVC feedstocks].

At the same time, a great deal of residential flooring expenditure can be postponed. Essential repairs, safety work and some commercial projects will continue. Replacing an adequate carpet, upgrading a living room or installing the more expensive floor a household would like is another matter. When money tightens, those decisions can wait.

That leaves the trade facing higher costs while customers become more reluctant to spend. My expectation is that the flooring industry is going to take a hammering. I would be very surprised if Headlam were the last failure.

Retailers and contractors need to keep a close eye on their suppliers, especially where pro-forma payment is required. Ask whether the goods are physically available, what the delivery commitment actually means and which legal entity is taking the money. Keep exposure within an amount your business could survive losing. Repeated delays and vague answers deserve attention before the next payment leaves your account.

A familiar name is no guarantee. Neither is a long trading history, an impressive showroom or a warehouse full of somebody else’s products.

We paid our supplier. We took responsibility for our customer. We were left chasing our own money.

And throughout all of this, we have not received an apology from anyone at Headlam for what has happened to us. The impression their handling of this has left me with is that they could not care less about the consequences for our business.

My advice to other retailers is straightforward: do not trust Headlam with your money. Stop buying its products, arrange for its display stands to be removed and find other suppliers. Give that floor space and that business to companies that earn your confidence through the way they treat you.

I see no reason for another retailer to assume they are immune to the problems we have experienced. An established account, a familiar salesperson and an agreed refund did not get our money back. Before paying another pro-forma invoice, ask yourself whether you could afford to be left in our position.

Headlam can ask for another order. It has given me no reason to trust it with one.

*Robert Barney, Cavendish deVere — 16 September 2026.*