Seating Matters company overview

(upbeat music) - All right, so I'm here with Martin. Martin. - Nice to meet you. - Yeah, thank you for having us, all the way from Texas to Northern Ireland. So, it's great to be here. I've talked with you and your brother for quite some time, to kind of arrange this, and thank you to Paul Akers for introducing. I think I was sleeping or something, and he was text messaging me in the middle of the morning about how I had to come here. And so, really, really excited. I wanted to maybe begin, Martin, with you telling us a little bit about, first of all, what do you do here at Seating Matters? And then tell us a little just about the company in general, like what do you do, your product, who's your customers, that sort of thing. - Well, Seating Matters is very much a family business. So our entire family work together in the business. And if we go way back to the start, how it began is my mother is an occupational therapist. So she was getting equipment for patients with really complex disabilities. And she needed chairs made exact for these people. So my father crafted a chair for one individual person. And then made a second, and then made a third. And my brothers and I thought, hey, there's a business here. There's more people that need these chairs than just our mother and her patients. - How old were you at that point? - We were 17, 18, and 19 years old at that point. I have a sister who's 10 years younger, so she was seven, so she had a key part at that stage. (laughs) - Yeah, yeah. - Today she works with us really closely as well. But way back then, so we were 17, 18, 19 years old, and we said, "Look, there's a business here. "There's more people that need our help "than just our mother's patients." So we designed a range of chairs and started to promote them and to provide them into care facilities, into hospitals, to patients with disabilities living at home. - Mostly here in Northern Ireland at that time? - Yeah-- - Okay. - So for the first year, we focused on Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And then we began to provide chairs in the UK. And now, currently we provide our chairs in Australia, in New Zealand, in the UK, Ireland, Canada, the States, and we actually provide quite a few chairs to the VA. So we're very proud and very happy to be able to provide our seating that our family have created to veterans who have served in the army, and the navy, and the air force, and all the forces in the States. - Okay. So you're teenagers, and your dad comes up with this idea, builds some prototypes. Everything's going good. Then how did this come to be? I mean, as far as the business itself? - Yes. So our father had his own business. He was doing construction. And our mother had her own business doing assessments for patients with disabilities. So the manufacturing, Seating Matters, the design, the clinical research that we've carried out in our chairs, is really happened then within the last 10 years, here at Seating Matters. So we made a range of products, a range of seven chairs, for adults, for children, and for bariatric patients. And then we then divided the business kind of into two streams. So, traditionally we're very custom, very specialized chairs crafted for an individual person. So very very bespoke and custom to an individual's needs. And now we have been able to take that learning and that research, that level of quality and that level of adjustability within a chair, and to make that to a very accessible chair, a universal chair that we're providing to hospitals all over the world. - Okay. Now you guys are the owners, right, the brothers? - Yes. - Is that right? - Mm-hmm. - So that was set up in the beginning? So were you literally like teenagers running a company? - Yeah, very much so, yeah. - (laughter) Okay. - So, we didn't have a clue. And maybe we still don't. (laughter) - Well you seem to be doing okay. - We're figuring some things out along the way. But really, it was starting from scratch here. None of us here went to business school, none of us here are experts in anything, from an educational perspective. So anything we've done, we've learned it ourselves. I mean, we had really good teachers in our parents. Our mother from a clinical side, our father from a work ethic and from a business perspective. But in terms of designing products, of running a factory, of a distribution network across the world, of getting and solving really complex problems in hospitals and long-term care facilities, we figured a lot of that out ourselves. - Wow, that's pretty amazing. So how many employees are working here now? - So we're close to 50 people who are in this building here. And then we also have an additional 40 people out and around the world. Yeah, so doing assessments, providing chairs-- - In fact, one of your brothers is abroad, isn't he? - That's right, yeah. - Yeah. - So of the three brothers, the oldest brother is Jonathan. And he looks after the States and Canada. So he's in the VA facilities everyday. He's in hospital care facilities in Canada and the States. My next brother, Ryan, he looks after all of the production. So the majority of the lean manufacturing and the lean process comes from Ryan. And really really expert at running the factory in a great way. And I look after the UK and Ireland, and, to some degree, Australia and New Zealand as well. - From like a sales perspective? - Yeah, from a sales perspective. Yeah, so I look after the UK and Ireland, and to some degree Australia and New Zealand as well, from a sales perspective, and managing our customers' needs and helping them out from that side. And our sister Louise, she is running-- - Keeps you all out of trouble, right? - That's right. (laughter) She runs the office at the moment. - Now is your mom involved as well? - Yeah, very much so, from a clinical perspective. So she does education with her customers and does research on the product. And, well perhaps you know, our father, unfortunately is passed away. - No, I didn't know. - Yeah. - Oh, okay. - So he passed away about three years ago. - Oh, okay, sorry. - So it's really comforting, it's really wonderful for us to know that chairs designs that he had his hands on are helping people around the world everyday. - [Ron] Oh, he must've been incredibly proud of you boys-- - [Martin] Yeah, we hope so. - [Ron] And sister, yeah. - It's a big driver for us to drive on with the legacy and the mission that he left with us. - Fantastic, fantastic. So, all right, well I want to come back and visit with you, in maybe in another video, to learn more about how you're maybe applying lean? I don't want to assume anything, but I'm guessing you're doing some lean activities with your sales work. - Very much so, yeah. - So let's come back to that. But thank you, I just wanted to get an origin story here of the company, I think we did a great job. - Thank you very much. (upbeat music)