About Proper Office Chairs

I fell in love with office furniture in 1984 when my childhood friend, Mike Parrish, and I formed a company called Bridgend Office Furniture selling used office furniture. I looked after product acquisition and external sales and Mike was was in charge of operations.

In the late 80’s we progressed into new furniture – as most used office furniture companies do.

The 90’s was when my passion – turned into a knowledge of all office furniture products in all ways – especially quality

New technological and manufacturing techniques were on the horizon and things were changing at a breakneck speed. From 1989-2012 I travelled the world visiting all the biggest office furniture expos, including: British, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Danish, Latvian, American and Canadian. Then from 2000, I added Malaysia and China.

Mike and I split in December 1999 and I formed Sebastien Furniture for Business, importing all the snazzy kit I had sourced on my travels and selling it to office furniture dealers nationwide.

Between 1989-2012 I visited Italy 130 times, working four or five day stints at a time, designing office desk and chair products. During that time Italy was the centre of design of all office furniture and I was like a kid in a candy store!

Between 1997-2005 I spent a lot of time in Toronto, Canada designing and manufacturing office chairs – as the Canadians were hungry for European products.

Between 2004-2010 I worked in China designing, developing and manufacturing office products.

I was always at the forefront of office furniture design and development worldwide.

During the financial crisis of 2008 we were growing too rapidly and got caught out in the process when the bank withdrew our credit. We got taken over by Desklink. The following year Desklink went into voluntary liquidation creating 265 redundancies in the process.

In 2010 I went full circle and once again started selling used office furniture again

Office desk design has seen incremental improvements year since the 1990’s, but lately not much has happened except for improved height adjustability. 

In the same period Chair development of office furniture was also rapid. They started copying in 2000 and a few of them started to get things right by 2010. Today there are some good Chinese products out there, but 99% of them are badly made. You can find them all on Alibaba.com. They do have nice stitching but have sub standard foam and more importantly have a cheap and nasty mechanisms underneath.

Now this my biggest problem. Potential clients nationwide go online and see pretty bright coloured chairs – cheap. If I get a chance to compete, I highlight how inferior their potential purchase is but many will ignore my advice and them anyway. Afterwards they learn I was right all along when their chairs start breaking. And now they don’t have any budget left to buy proper office chairs from me.

Proper Office Chairs will give me a chance to highlight why you should buy from us. Ignore us at your peril.

The knowledge will prevail – in most cases

Now – big headed git that I am (on office furniture ) – a little ego trip below.

In 2005 I was hired by a consortium from Toronto as products adviser in their pitch to win the business for Regus worldwide. When we knew the spec, I would source the component suppliers for the consortium. I jumped at a chance to stay in the Fort Lauderdale Hyatt five star resort, all expenses paid.

If we won the contract and Regus spent $10m, then I would get $25k and if they spend over $30m then I would get another $25k.

We were up against the five biggest office furniture companies in the world: Steelcase; Herman Miller; Haworth; Hon & Allsteel and two others (with a combined turnover of over $7billion wordwide). I was hugely surprised at the poor quality of the product they all put forward at the first presentation. They were the biggest office furniture manufacturers in the world and at medium product level – they were rubbish. 

The American way of doing business is to supply all the pitchers with the prices they are up against after the first round. We won in every area – we were half the price on most products quoted! The Toronto guys were mega excited – the two year contract had a projected value of $90million as Regus were on a rapid expansion worldwide.

“Ok Jules – are you sure your prices are correct?”, they said. To which I replied: “Yes”. I double-checked the figures the following morning as doubt had kicked in – LOL!

A month later we went back for the second pitch. Everybody had a chance to sharpen their pencils – again the American way of getting the best price. I was quadruple amazed! Three of the competitors had dramatically de-specced their products to try and arrive at our price point. These chairs would not last six months in the field – and still they had only saved a further 20%.

The forth company had copied our spec, but again had only shaved 20% off his previous prices.

We won the contract – the price and quality of the products won the day.

I had my two payments in 2006 & 2007

That wasn’t an ego trip really. That was to convey that my knowledge of the market place beat the five biggest office furniture companies in the world at that time. 
I realised with the cost of their corporate machine – they couldn’t get down low enough to beat me.

Pity I couldn’t turn that advantage into mega bucks. That’s another story for another day.

But it will work big time for Proper Office Chairs.