Design and interior furnishings provider LOFT has reported a slight decline in sales.

According to its latest filed accounts for the year ended 31 March 2023, total sales fell 1.3% to £15m from £15.2m in 2022.

Pre-tax losses resulted at £883,000, widening from its loss of £393,000 recorded the previous year.

Stated within its report, the company said: “Despite facing extremely challenging market conditions across each of our primary sales channels, we continued to adopt a longer-term approach, investing in our team and new initiatives to position the business to capture market share.

“In FY23 we built our team with a clear focus on delivering significant growth in London and the South. This did yield results in FY23, but the return on our investment has been more substantial in FY24, where we are already close to exceeding our 12-month performance in FY23.

“The business delivered an operating loss before depreciation and amortisation of £102,541 in the 12 months to 31 March 2023, compared with a restated EBTIDA in FY22 of £289,810.

“This result fell significantly short of our budgeted performance for the year, but the severity and duration of the macro-economic headwinds far exceeded our expectations, having a negative impact on stability across almost every department in the business.

“Having navigated the most challenging year in our company history, we remain confident about LOFT’s ability to take advantage of increasing our market share in the residential sector and achieving continued growth in the coming years.”