It was the first carpet retailer to open very large stores on busy main roads, often after redeveloping former car showrooms.

To facilitate rapid expansion, in 1974, a head office and major distribution centre was opened in West Bromwich.

It was alluded to in Reeves and Mortimer's comedy song 'My Rose Has Left Me' and in One Foot in the Grave, in which the protagonist expressed his desire to have his ashes scattered in a branch of Allied Carpets to register his dissatisfaction with its customer service.

In July 1998, the company had its shares suspended when financial irregularities were recorded in some of the sales figures from its stores.

At the same time, TS-M bought Home Market [de] of Aachen, Germany, who also own Ihr Teppichfreund.

The administrators BDO Stoy Hayward immediately sold 51 of the company's 217 stores, and the insurance part of the business to Allied Carpets Retail Limited.

This secured four hundred jobs, and saving the company from going the same way as other retail giants, including MFI, Woolworths and Zavvi.

[4] Among the casualties was the store at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the West Midlands, which closed over that summer after twenty three years in operation – having been one of the first retailers to take advantage of the Enterprise Zone, that was designated in the area to relieve high unemployment, when it opened that store in 1986.

[5] The company was based at Allied House, 76 High Street, Orpington in the London Borough of Bromley, near the junction of the A208 and A224.