As marketing director Duncan Inglis shows me around the factory where Emir workbenches are made, this does not seem like a company under immediate threat.

Skilled workmen sand off the edges of the next order of school tables, each delicately crafted but built to last, with metal vices and handmade drawers. Then, in the office, the phone rings.

“We have had a few phone calls from people threatening us with cash-only order restrictions,” said Mr Inglis.

Word has got out the firm has given redundancy notices to all its 13 employees, and many suppliers have got twitchy.

“This is not just a knee-jerk reaction,” he said. “The company has been struggling for the last few years.”

Emmerich (Berlon) Ltd, which manufacturers the Emir brand, has found itself in a perfect storm of problems that could see the company, founded in London in 1932, close by the end of November.

Margins have been squeezed by catalogue companies seeking larger discounts for schools and universities, while a rich revenue stream funded by the government’s Building Schools for the Future initiative has come to an end.

“We’re always under pressure to increase our discount,” said owner-director Samantha Emmerich, who is the third generation of her family to run the business.

“We have been told by catalogue companies ‘if you don’t give us a bigger discount we will stop using you’. We couldn’t give them a bigger discount and they stopped using us.”

However, there is a plan to save the firm, and all its jobs, which rests on being able to split its 40,000sq ft premises. Emmerich (Berlon) would move into a smaller 11,000sq ft space and rent or sell the rest.

This would drastically reduce business rates from £67,000 a year to about £14,000 and cut its £24,000 annual electricity bill.

Its present situation might have been avoided if it was not for some bad luck. Bosses were in talks with a company just before Christmas about renting the factory space vacated by the proposed move, but discussions collapsed after three months.

It is hoped a new set of talks with a potential leasee will save the company, which moved to Ashford in 1966.

If a deal goes ahead, it will be able to invest in renovating the site and carry out its strategy to interact more with schools and hire two apprentice craftsmen.

“Things are looking quite positive,” said Ms Emmerich. “We are quietly confident that the sale plan is working and we are going to be able to move into our slimline premises with hugely reduced overheads and act on our strategies.”

Now a race against time is on to get the deal finalised before the redundancy notices run out in November.

“A lot of the employees have been very supportive about it because they know exactly where we’re at,” said Ms Emmerich.

“It’s tough times for all of us, but we are hoping to continue with the workforce we have and then to look to the future and take on some apprentices.”

Trade has dropped at Emmerich (Berlon) since the schools introduced more streamlined procurement procedures.

Marketing director Duncan Inglis said that anecdotally he had come across more and more universities and schools who had been instructed to use a preferred supplier.

“The idea is the school wants a bench, phones the catalogue, tells them their budget and gets the best available.

“The catalogue company is supposed to know about benches, but they don’t, so inevitably the school ends up contacting us saying they need this size of vice or that.

“They get what they want, but they are paying more because they go through the catalogue company. If they have £10,000, the catalogue company might say they can have eight benches.

"If they came to us direct, they could have had 10 benches, we would be paid £10,000 instead of £8,000 and they would get the benches they want.”

Ms Emmerich added: “I think we could do with a bit more proactive involvement from government.

They say they want to support small and medium-sized businesses, but I don’t think they are always putting their money where their mouth is.

“They are tacitly supporting this reseller catalogue structure. About 20 years ago a company like ours dealt directly with schools and local authorities and we had a good personal relationship with lots of them. Now that is not the case.”

Samantha Emmerich took over Emmerich (Berlon) Ltd from her father Bill in 2008.

The firm originally began in Remscheid, Germany, in 1852 before Friedrich Wilhelm Emmerich, Samantha’s grandfather, established a UK operation in London in 1932.

After a successful move to Ashford in 1966 under her father Bill, the company continued to build on its reputation for craftsmenship and long-lasting wooden products.

However, Samantha was parachuted in from her home in Scotland after numerous attempts to pass on the business failed.

“There were all sorts of strategies,” she said. “My dad employed someone in a marketing role who he thought could be brought up to take over, but that didn’t work out.

“My dad looked at employees taking a share in the business so it would eventually be owned by employees, but that didn’t work either.

“It came to the crunch, my dad was in his 70s and we had run out of options.”

Although she did not say the move was reluctant, she said she had been forced to learn to run the business quickly. She made her managing director Stephen Rowe redundant in 2013.

She said: “I was just a mum with three kids living in Scotland busy converting a farmhouse.

“I’m not trained as a business person. I’ve got a degree in modern languages and I used to work for a wildlife trust.

“Here I am, brought in. My father tried to get other ways to continue the family business, but none of them worked and here I am.

“During the swapover stage we had a managing director we no longer have and we’ve learned some lessons.”