About Us
Who are we? | Our Buying Philosophy | Awards
 
A little about who we are and what we do...

We've been an independent, Scottish furniture retailer for over thirty years. Our Tillicoultry site has been developing constantly over that time and we now have a unique and fantastic shopping and visitor attraction complex unrivalled anywhere in Scotland.

Back in 1974, our founder, George Knowles Snr., saw the growing popularity of 'out-of-town' retail developments in America. He converted a disused mill in Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire, into the largest furniture showroom in Scotland.
 
 
The mill's size allowed us to indulge our passion for furniture - we travel the globe, building relationships with like-minded businesses to present the largest and most diverse range of furniture to our Scottish customers.

Over time, we've added a host of things to the site - a coffee shop, a cafe, a restaurant, a garden centre and a factory outlet shop for household goods. Whatever we do, it's all with the intention of giving our customers a great day out in the country, as well as great shopping.

In many ways, this quirky mill has come to represent who we are and what we stand for - we are individual, totally unique, and you won’t find another like us anywhere in Britain. We lead the way, and others cannot catch up. Not a boast but a fact and our pride in the Tillicoultry complex is well-founded. Bulging with fantastic must-buys for the home, gifts, gardening and restaurants – this can only be found here – Sterling Furniture, Tillicoultry.

Our range of furniture is bought with all of our customers in mind - it is truly individual, sometimes idiosyncratic, but always hugely diverse in terms of style and price.

In fact, we firmly believe that no matter what your style or budget, or what room you are planning to furnish, you will find exactly what you're looking for at Sterling.

Not content to have one site, however massive it may be, we wanted to increase our presence across Scotland. So, over the years, we've added six other stores to our portfolio. As much as we'd love to present the full range on offer in Tillicoultry in every one of them, the simple reality of size prohibits it, so we've tried to tailor the ranges to suit the needs of our customers locally.

We hope that this website, and shortly an online shop, will help to bring the magic of Tillicoultry to everyone in Scotland.
 
Our Buying Philosophy

George Knowles Snr set the standard for sourcing and buying the best quality and best value furniture products from around the world when he founded Sterling back in the 70's. The site for his massive and, at the time, innovative new out-of-town furniture emporium was an ex-Wiggins Teape paper mill in Tillicoultry.

Inspired by the giant shopping warehouses he had seen in the States, George Snr was gambling that the same 'buy in bulk, sell 'em cheap' philosophy would work here too. And how it did! But he also had the foresight to understand that his customers would not want a 'one suite suits all' type of shop and so he set about scouring the world for the best furniture to suit for all tastes.

Now it's no longer George Knowles Snr who heads off on these missions but a whole team of buyers and specialists. And as you listen to the list of places they visit - Birmingham, Paris, Singapore… it starts to sound like a world tour.

And certainly the furniture buying tastes of the great Scottish public have changed, and the buyers have had to keep changing fast to keep up with them. From the 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' days of the 70's, through the all co-ordinated fashionable looks of the 80's, past the value conscious 90's, into today's fast-moving, trend-conscious world, Sterling has been a constant pace-setting presence.

These days, looking east is the key to delivering great quality at the kind of price demanded. The Far East, particularly China, and Eastern Europe are the source for the kind of manufacturers who can deliver that combination. In contrast to the days when products from that part of the world were a by-word for shoddy workmanship, today their quality competes with the best from the UK.

Once a month, the close-knit furniture buying team at Sterling gets together for an intense session to share the ideas and information they've picked up whilst clocking up the air-miles. Trends get identified and customer feedback and sales information are exchanged. The decisions made at this juncture will make or break the season. With so many customers with all kinds of tastes to be satisfied, finding the right brands, suppliers and manufacturers is absolutely key.

As Gordon Mearns, MD of Sterling, points out, "Most furniture chains only deal with a maximum of ten suppliers. In contrast, we deal with 100's. Look, if we reduced things down to the lowest common denominator, our life would be a lot simpler, but we're not selling baked beans. It sounds a bit pretentious, but we are selling a dream and everyone dreams differently."

It's obviously a philosophy that's worked as Sterling has won UK Retailer of the Year at the Furniture Awards on three occasions – against impressive competition.
 
Awards

Sterling was named Retailer of the Year at the Furniture Awards in 1995, 1996 and 2002.