Award winning garden designer Andy Sturgeon approached Posture People to fix one chair that have been supplied by another furniture company and we ended up supplying his whole Company with chairs. Like many companies, everyone who worked at Andy Sturgeon Garden Design, worked extremely long hours and were all starting to suffer from that. The following interview was conducted by journalist Dee Blick.
Andy, tell us about your business and your success at The Chelsea Flower Show
Well, we do mostly private garden design with no construction. As designers we are office based. We’ve just done our fourth garden design at The Chelsea Flower Show and won our third gold medal. In fact, we are now sitting on our brand new green chairs doing next year’s garden design, sponsored by Cancer Research UK. They have a campaign that you will have probably heard of “Together we’ll beat cancer”. The main focus of our garden design this year was a 30-Metre wooden sculpture that linked all the parts of the garden together. Winning is very important to us. We enter to win the gold medal! As you can imagine, the time leading up to the judging is both tense and exciting. Although we are responsible for the design, I also oversee the construction of the garden and get very much involved with the planting.
Andy Sturgeon & colleague
What made you decide to use Posture People?
My chair needed fixing and the manufacturer recommended that I go to Posture People. I went into their showroom, not even thinking about buying more chairs for my team. Then I just happened to sit in a chair and it was so incredibly comfortable that I bought four of them. Because we’re designers, we spend most of our days sitting behind a computer and this can lead to back problems. The new chairs are both ergonomic and fantastic to look at!
Image showing a garden design
Did you consider approaching another supplier?
No. David seemed like a nice, decent, genuine bloke who really knew what he was talking about. It didn’t seem worthwhile going anywhere else plus I’m all for supporting local suppliers when I can.
Was there anything about Posture People’s service that you would change?
No. David fixed my existing office chair with an improved back design instead of just trying to sell me a new chair to replace the broken one. The new back means my chair is now stronger than the previous mend. When David came into the office he also noticed that the casters on our existing chairs were not right for our wood floor so he replaced them. The whole experience with Posture People was stress free from start to finish… a real contrast from the previous supplier that I dealt with.
What do your team think about their green chairs?
In the past, I’ve tried to get the team to be enthusiastic about chairs but it hasn’t worked! However, David brought in colour swatches and we eventually settled on the bright green fabric for our chairs, with an aluminium base and arms. Now everyone is excited about the chairs. Because we are all designers, we do take an interest in these things and a black chair would have been a wasted opportunity! As we grow, we simply order another chair from Posture People.
One of the new chairs
