BUSINESS
Rhoop Design A success story of extraordinary diversification, proving all is not lost when a global pandemic wipes out your order book. Local Yelverton company Sussex Seating has changed its product offer, resulting in the creation of something quite beautiful and long lasting. Liz Dawes, proprietor of Sussex Seating and director of the new Rhoop Design, explains how this came about.
So where did it all start? We started in Sussex in 1997. I was general manager of a theatre and in the middle of a massive refurbishment. I was dealing with the company responsible for the seating and, to cut a long story short, ended up going into partnership with Robert Hooper and setting up Sussex Seating. We supply many of the independent cinemas, theatres and lecture theatres around the UK - anything with fixed auditorium seating. I moved the business down to the West Country in 2010 and we are now based at Yelverton. Then came Covid-19!
The birth of Rhoop Design
chair is inspired by the Bauhaus School and is supremely comfortable and ergonomic. We also offer a re-upholstery service, so clients can bring in their old chairs and we reupholster them. Many businesses have had to reinvent themselves due to this pandemic and Rhoop Design is a great example of how to use your existing skills, but in a slightly different way. Even when auditorium seating is back in demand, Rhoop Design is here to stay. Just launched, the Grenofen homeworker’s office chair
For our Sussex Seating clients it is a desperate situation; theatres and cinemas are closed and these are our key customers, so at the end of March, all our orders and contracts just stopped. The cancellation of the latest James Bond film put the final nail in the coffin for many of our clients. This business will come back at some point but we decided that diversification was something we had to do. Robert has always designed furniture, and at some point we had always planned to offer domestic seating. Covid-19 just made that happen a lot quicker. During late March and early April, we revisited Rob’s desire to design and make domestic-use chairs and sofas. We have very highly skilled craftsmen working for us and we needed to utilise their abilities. Robert started to design a range of chairs and sofas and I spent a great deal of time building up contacts in the area with interior designers and retailers. This was the birth of Rhoop Design.
The new range We have now created a completely new range of domestic furniture, to suit a discerning taste. These are high quality pieces of furniture. We also offer a bespoke design service, where clients can come to us and tell us what kind of chair they are looking for; we talk to them about their chair, use computer design technology, discuss materials, patterns and styles and create a chair especially for them. We have also just launched a new office chair called the Grenofen, aimed at all those new homeworkers. The 52
More information: You can see the range of seating at www.rhoopdesign.co.uk and get in touch with Liz as below: sales@sussexseating.co.uk ✆ 01822 835968
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