The future of Corridor, the on-line trading site for the furniture trade, seems to be in doubt, just months after it was unveiled to the industry at the Furniture Show (TTJ January 27).
The venture, which was also eventually intended to be a market place for furniture components and materials, was the creation of eBusinesssMedia, a division of United Business Media. At the time of the launch the company said it had invested several million pounds in the site (www.corridor.com) and that it would lead to a ‘fundamental change’ in the way the industry did business.
Last week question marks were raised over the site continuing. A spokesperson said he could not make any detailed comments about how it had been performing, but confirmed that the company was ‘in consultation with staff about the future of Corridor’.
eBusinessMedia initially ran Corridor as a pilot project with a number of manufacturers, intending to extend this by offering companies a six-month free trial. The company was not available for comment on how successful this was or how the proposed live trading launch went in April.
At the Furniture Show, Mike Dudley-Jones of Corridor said that the next ‘logical step’ was to extend the trading facility to furniture raw materials suppliers.
