Global Upholstery Solutions Limited

We Are Upholstery

britishupholstery

Upholstery Production Week 19

by Leave a Comment

Obviously a short week last week with the VE Day Bank Holiday. The output was solid as ever and our OTIF remains at 100%. While it might seem that we would expect that with lower output, obviously we have furloughed staff so the output is matched by capacity. The range of products we need to deliver is still just as high so the challenge is exactly the same as it was previously. The OTIF performance is still excellent.

Products Shipped – 992

Number of different product types shipped – 31

OTIF – 100%

Click here to read more about our Commercial Upholstery services

Our 20,000 square foot upholstery factory is designed into manufacturing cells with all our processes built to make our Upholstery Production with an efficient and effective use of resources. This allows our 50-strong shop floor team to produce large quantities of high-quality products in short lead times and deliver on time, every time.

Each cell includes CNC fabric cutting, adhesive spraying for foam, multiple sewing machines and machinists, multiple upholstery benches and quality inspection, packing and despatch benches.

Our team are multi-skilled and experienced so that one day we could be making 1500 identical theatre seats, the next we could make a single banquette seat. Our process is designed to adapt to whatever our customers need from us as we don’t make any of our own products – everything we make is for our business customers that need highly reliable deliveries of a range of products.

The Top Stitch #7

by Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

The Top Stitch interior design

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

Brewdog

For this post, I’ve added a LinkedIn link because the video is perfect. however, the extract content below is from a blog post so I’ve linked back to that one at the bottom.

This is a hugely challenging time for our bars. Here at BrewDog, we are all longing for the day when our team are back in our bars, serving world class craft beer to our awesome community again.

Although the future for hospitality businesses is incredibly uncertain, we remain very optimistic that customers will soon crave the social interaction and escapism of visiting pubs, bars and restaurants.

With that in mind, whilst we eagerly await official guidance from the government, our amazing bars teams have been working on various proposals, which we think will help us welcome customers back in to our bars when it is safe to do so, and offer them an environment where those customers can feel relaxed and safe.

Read more

What is The Circular Economy? – Ellen MacArthur Foundation

A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.

Where we have come from

A transformation in our ability to make things changed society.

We’ve been at a turning point before. In 1684 Thomas Savery invented the steam engine and it changed everything. This invention kick-started the industrial revolution, which transformed our ability to make things. Raw materials and energy were seemingly infinite, and labour was readily available. For the first time in history, goods were mass produced.

TOP 100  INTERIOR DESIGNERS TO KNOW IN 2020 – LuxDeco

The LuxDeco 100—previously the LuxDeco 50—returns with twice the number of talent for its second issue. The annually published list highlights and celebrates the world’s leading interior designers for the creativity, positive impact and commitment to luxury design which they contribute to the design world.

Celebrating incredible interiors and sharing them as inspiration for our community is one of our duties as a leading platform for luxury interiors. The design world is brilliantly diverse and replete with interior designers who are creating waves that will be felt by generations of designers to come. The LuxDeco internal selection panel was able to narrow the field down as it focused on three criteria: creativity, industry impact and commitment to luxury design.

Kaoi studio designs modular Ebba chairs based on Ettore Sottsass’ Memphis movement – dezeen

This modular chair collection by Thai design studio Kaoi takes cues from the 1980s Memphis Group, featuring four graphic armrests that can be mixed and matched to offer different aesthetic “personalities”.

Designed in collaboration with THINKK studio, Kaoi’s Ebba chair collection is composed of three deckchair-style seats that can be brought to life with four variations of armrests.

WantedDesign Manhattan Online Conversation Series – WantedDesign

WantedDesign partners with Design Milk + Clever to keep WantedDesign Manhattan Conversation series alive!

In response to the cancellation of the 2020 fair, we put together an online program with new episodes of Clever podcast and live talks, between May 11 and May 22, 2020.

“At first, when we heard about the cancellation of WantedDesign Manhattan. we were sad, we had LIVE episodes planned, and we looked forward to seeing all our friends and absorbing all of the latest design inspiration – it’s an important hub of connectivity and community for the design industry. Then we got fired up. We couldn’t just stand by and not do anything about this – so, Clever, already adept at remote recording and digital distribution, is working closely with WantedDesign Manhattan and Design Milk to keep the Conversation Series alive!” – Amy Devers, co-founder Clever

A tribute to creative minds who changed the world – WeTransfer

WeTransfer believes creative thinking has the power to change the world. So every year, we pay tribute to the creative minds we’ve lost whose lives and work changed the way we think, the way we see and the way we understand.

Anyone from the team can nominate a figure we should pay tribute to, and our supertalented community of artists do the rest.

The Sonoran Collection Shines a Bright Light on Weaving – design milk

We’re as antsy to spend time outdoors as you are, making the Sonoran Collection release from HOLLY HUNT all the more exciting. Its second outdoor furniture collection draws inspiration from the topography and creature forms found in the Sonoran Desert in the southwest United States.

HOLLY HUNT worked together with a group of weavers in Southeast Asia to develop new techniques – a double weave with a vertical wrapping – and materials for a more streamlined look.

74 CREATES STUDENT AMENITY SPACE FOR SYMONS HOUSE IN LEEDS – Design insider

Multi-award-winning interiors and architecture practice 74 has completed a stand-out student amenities project for client London and Scottish Student Housing within their new-build Symons House student accommodation block in Leeds. 74 also created the project’s branding and wayfinding.

Symons House, designed by Leeds-based architectural practice Cunniff Design, takes the form of a reverse L-shape building, with seven storeys located on its lower horizontal plane and twenty-one on the vertical upright section.

Chair Times: A History of Seating – From 1800 to Today – Dexigner

Vitra is streaming ‘Chair Times’ – a film that documents the many-sided world of chairs – for free during this particular time. The film charts a course through an ocean of chairs.

In Chair Times, Vitra Chairman Emeritus and former CEO Rolf Fehlbaum speaks with experts in the design field, including designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director of the Vitra Design Museum Mateo Kries, Vitra Design Museum curator Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit.

Focusing on 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum, the conversations explore the development of chairs over centuries, examining them as ‘portraits of their users.’

Need a fresh perspective? See the world like a horse does (or a cow or a cat or an ant …) – Ted

Almost never, says Alan Hook, a design researcher at Ulster University in Northern Ireland: “We understand the world from a very fixed human-centric point of view … so [we] can’t really understand what it must be like to be a different creature.”

Meet some human designers who are breaking down the barriers. In Ireland, Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary have created a series of meta-perceptual helmets that allowed wearers to view the world through the stereo vision of a hammerhead shark or the separately rotatable eyes of the chameleon. To get as close to being a goat as possible, UK designer Thomas Thwaites (TED talk: How I built a toaster from scratch) built himself a prosthetic goat legs and a prosthetic rumen (goat stomach) and took to the Swiss Alps to graze on grass.

Stella McCartney in conversation with Sir David Adjaye – Clerkenwell Design week

As part of Design Museum’s continued #DesignDispatches series, next week features pioneering British designers Stella McCartney and Sir David Adjaye. Join them on Wednesday 13 May 2020 as they talk all things fashion and architecture.

A brief history of the Bubble Chair – Icon

Eero Aarnio’s iconic Bubble Chair is a clear, ball-shaped seat that hangs from the ceiling

The Bubble Chair is a true icon of the 1960s. Designed by celebrated Finnish designer Eero Aarnio, the chair was decidedly futuristic at the time it was launched. A spin-off of his earlier Ball Chair, the Bubble retained the same circular shape, but instead of standing on a leg it hangs from the ceiling.

The Ball Chair was designed in 1963, and is also known as the globe chair. At the time it was designed the Ball Chair’s shape was completely unconventional. The chair’s spherical form creates a unique acoustic around the user.

Around our little group

by Leave a Comment

We have a number of updates from around our group that you might have missed. Here’s a miniature digest.

blackswan

https://blackswancreative.co.uk/bespoke-fabric-design-made-easy/
Global Upholstery Solutions and Panaz have long shared a strong relationship and have collaborated on various projects over the years. We were therefore delighted when our Account Manager, the wonderful June George, visited us to introduce ReMake, a new piece of design technology developed by Panaz. This progression in technology is extremely exciting for designers, generating endless possibilities for us and resolving design dilemmas that may arise on projects and the exact reason why we created blackswan. Panaz describes ReMake as a ‘turning point in bespoke fabric design. By putting the ability to recolour and rework any Panaz print design directly into your hands’
https://blackswancreative.co.uk/cadus/
Presented by design agency blackswan, the Cadus is a new concept for the office environment, which creates a statement to your customers and employees.The pseudo-industrial design with rough hewn wood, exposed ply and visible fixings are complemented by beautiful leather upholstery with contrast stitch details. 
https://blackswancreative.co.uk/popschema/
popschema is the new concept designed by blackswan for Interior Designers that resets the design standard for headboards. redesign The popschema headboard has two components. popgrid provides the structural back for the headboard to match the bed size. 

Reupholstery Limited

https://reupholstery.uk/bring-them-back/
Antimicrobial fabrics are the new normal for hospitality – migrating from the healthcare sector.
As soon as the starting gun goes to get the country back up and running again, wouldn’t it be great to get out of the starting blocks quickly? As someone wise once said, a day lost at the start is a day lost at the end. The sooner your customers start coming back, the earlier you’ll start on the recovery curve.

The Top Stitch #5

by Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

The Top Stitch interior design

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

Why we need creative confidence – Ted

In 2012, IDEO founder and longtime Stanford professor David Kelley took the TED stage in Long Beach and shared a deeply personal story. It was the tale of his own cancer diagnosis, of finding a lump in his neck and being told he had a 40% chance of survival. This was clearly a sobering moment, but he wasn’t sharing the story to seek our sympathy. Rather, he wanted to talk about his resulting epiphany. “While you’re waiting for your turn to get the gamma rays, you think of a lot of things,” he said drily. “I thought a lot about: ‘What was I put on earth to do? What was my calling? What should I do?’”

VDF and Ron Arad present an exclusive video showing the development of Arad’s Don’t F**k With The Mouse chairs – dezeen

VDF teams up with Ron Arad for the video launch of a new series of sculptural chairs – including one that commemorates Brexit – followed by a live interview with the designer at 2:00pm UK time.

The London-based designer and architect created the movie for VDF to explain how he developed the chairs, which were originally supposed to be exhibited at the OTI Gallery in Los Angeles. However, the show was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

New chairs are based on Arad’s classic Big Easy

International Womens Day

Earth Day 2020 Sustainable Fabrics – Global Upholstery Solutions

Eco Fabrics and Sustainability in the Upholstery Industry

It’s plain to see that we are in a growing world and industry where sustainability, recycling and repurposing is at the forefront of projects and is becoming more and more an important credential or specification. With this being the case, the information gathered below will enable us to assist those customers who are required to include such accredited fabrics to their portfolio.

Ybox Offices – Tel Aviv – Office Snapshots

Alex Meitlis Design was tasked to design the offices for Ybox, an entrepreneurial and construction company, located in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The concept was to build a gold box in the open-plan office that created the interest in the large open space without competing with the view.

The box is facing the “living room” an open space with various seating and an active bar serving as the center of the office.

From the living area you can see the developing skyline of Tel Aviv and this view is perfect for a construction company.

We decided to use only natural materials that come from the construction world – concrete, wood, glass and metal (brass).

Surviving The New Normal – LinkedIn Pulse

While it is difficult to predict the future, it seems probable that food delivery will become a more permanent feature in many hospitality businesses. The demand for food delivery has increased and it seems likely that once the government-imposed lockdown is over, many customers will continue to remain apprehensive about visiting pubs and restaurants. This apprehension may well continue until an effective vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 is developed.

Moroso Presents the Multifunctional Taba to Live, Sit, Talk, and Work – design milk

With every design fair and event shelved for the foreseeable future, Italian furnishings brand Moroso just released a new collaboration with Swiss-Argentinian designer Alfredo Häberli – the Taba collection – online. Häberli created the collection of multifunctional seating for public and private spaces as destinations to live, sit, talk, and work. Taba includes eight pieces – a sofa, two armchairs, a bench, and four ottomans – featuring soft curves and overlapping organic lines that embrace comfort and conversation. Each sculptural piece can stand alone but configured together they play off each others meandering curves.

Interior Design Industry: Life in Lockdown – SBID

With lockdown measures extended and social distancing continuing to impact industries world-wide, we’re sharing more industry perspectives from across the interior design profession. SBID Accredited designers and manufacturers provide their personal insights into how they are dealing with daily life and work in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I tweaked a few things” – Seth’s Blog

The easiest way to get a contribution, advice or feedback is to present something that’s 90% done.

If you ask too early in the process, if you’re hoping for conceptual insights, you’ll probably be disappointed.

Style steal – modern desert – Fabric of My Life

The ‘desert decor’ trend has been an undercurrent in interiors for the past few years but has really come to the fore for Spring Summer 2020, so there are plenty of accessories out there just now that can help you achieve the look. The basis for the trend has to be the current obsession with houseplants – in particular cacti – which is certainly one of the quickest and easiest places to start, but I’d also recommend embracing the soft arid tones of the desert (think sun-scorched hues such as warm terracotta, creamy saffron and burnt adobe red), woven rattan textures, handcrafted wicker-style baskets, and chunky handmade pottery and ceramics.

Benjamin Moore releases 2020 Colour of the Year palette – Pippa Jameson

Benjamin Moore releases their 2020 Colour of the Year palette containing ten harmonious hues. The unique group of ten versatile shades, including First Light, ranges from the dark and mysterious, to soft and playful. The palette seamlessly delivers modern paint colour pairings that combine optimism with understatement, a timeless way to lighten up a home and embrace a modern look. For more 2020 paint trends

A brief history of Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair – Icon

First a student then a teacher at the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer designed many innovative pieces. His Wassily chair is the most iconic.

Hungarian-American architect Marcel Breuer was known for his innovative furniture design and use of tubular steel. Though he created many pieces of furniture in his time, the Wassily chair is his most iconic piece.

The chair was designed in 1925, inspired by a bicycle frame. It is made of curving tubes of steel and leather slings that create a seat that is ergonomic and comfortable, yet still highly sculptural and minimal in form.

Ten Beautiful Pieces Of Furniture To Spend Your Stimulus Check On – Forbes

In mid-March, congress passed the CARES Act, which set aside funds to give approximately 140 million Americans up to $1200 per adult in a household plus an additional $500 per child under seventeen years old, to help stimulate the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

If you aren’t using your check to stay afloat, purchasing new furniture is a great way to use it. Even when social distancing mandates are lifted, most of us are still going to be spending a lot more time at home for the foreseeable future. So what better way to stimulate the economy than to improve your living space?

Upholstery Production Week 17

by Leave a Comment

A greater number of products moved last week with the longer week, but still obviously low while we’re in the midst of the furlough. The range of products was also quite high.

The team is still working hard and have even managed to do some development work for our design agency blackswan.

As ever, despite furlough, we are still maintaining 100% OTIF and customer enquiries are picking back up, albeit slowly. We are even seeing enquiries from new customers, which is encouraging and testament to our reliability in these difficult times. We’ve received a lot of good feedback and gratitude by supporting existing customers with new products at short notice because their current supplier is shut down.

Products Shipped – 1675

Number of different product types shipped – 60

OTIF – 100%

Click here to read more about our Commercial Upholstery services

Our 20,000 square foot upholstery factory is designed into manufacturing cells with all our processes built to make our Upholstery Production with an efficient and effective use of resources. This allows our 50-strong shop floor team to produce large quantities of high-quality products in short lead times and deliver on time, every time.

Each cell includes CNC fabric cutting, adhesive spraying for foam, multiple sewing machines and machinists, multiple upholstery benches and quality inspection, packing and despatch benches.

Our team are multi-skilled and experienced so that one day we could be making 1500 identical theatre seats, the next we could make a single banquette seat. Our process is designed to adapt to whatever our customers need from us as we don’t make any of our own products – everything we make is for our business customers that need highly reliable deliveries of a range of products.

Earth Day 2020

by 1 Comment

International Womens Day

To celebrate Earth Day 2020, and because sustainability is close to our hearts, we thought we would share our research on sustainable products from our fabric suppliers, carried out by our Materials Manager, Lindsay Watson-Jones.

Please feel free to add your comments below.

Eco Fabrics and Sustainability in the Upholstery Industry

It’s plain to see that we are in a growing world and industry where sustainability, recycling and repurposing is at the forefront of projects and is becoming more and more an important credential or specification. With this being the case, the information gathered below will enable us to assist those customers who are required to include such accredited fabrics to their portfolio.

Before we start, here’s an interesting note:

Ref: Tree Hugger.com

“High-tech” isn’t what you’d normally think of when it comes to fabric, but in recent years, that’s exactly what it has become. Innovation has brought about revolutionary new materials and processes, and one rapidly changing industry. Several different criteria go into making what can be called an eco textile, but seven basic questions you should ask are:

  1. Is it recyclable?
  2. Is it made of recyclable materials?
  3. Is it easily biodegradable?
  4. Is it produced using green manufacturing processes without harmful chemical byproducts?
  5. Does it follow McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC)’s Cradle to Cradle principals?
  6. Does the finished product off-gas harmful chemicals having a negative effect on indoor air quality?
  7. Does the manufacturer have a company-wide sustainability policy?

Offerings from our regulars:

Panaz

ecoTWILL™ by Panaz, the industry first, contract quality, 100% recycled polyester basecloth for print. Made in England, this truly sustainable, low carbon footprint basecloth for upholstery allows architects and designers to specify a fire-retardant standard fabric, which is a durable and eco-friendly product for hospitality and workspace contract environments. Woven with yarns manufactured from recycled plastic, each metre of ecoTWILL™ repurposes dozens of 500ml plastic bottles into a desirable, long-lasting fabric (100,000+ martindale) which itself is recyclable at end-of-life.

Kvadrat

Danish firm Kvadrat – Six of the firm’s textiles are particularly green.

((lnteresting when you have a moment: https://kvadrat.dk/about/our-environment))

Hallingdal, 70 percent new wool and 30 percent viscose.     Molly is stamped with the EU  Flower designation, meaning manufacturing, chemical composition, and quality is checked by independent bodies in order to comply to strict ecological and performance criteria.

More interested in biodegradable? Flora, Kosmos, and Helix, are labelled “Good Green Buy” by the Bra Miljöval (or Falken), a Swedish eco label backed by the Swedish Society for Nature. This means contents can easily breakdown at the end of the product’s lifecycle.

Kvadrat continued: Across 465964 seating upholstery from textile manufacturer Maharam is made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled polyester. The firm has several textiles containing some or all recycled content, as well as a few designed to be easily biodegradable.

Chieftain

Chieftain Carousel, their 2nd fabric to launch into the woven market. Its composition is made up of 59% Recycled Cotton and 41% Polyester. It is suitable for all contact application with Crib 5 certification & 200,000 Martindale Rubs. Carousel is also has Aquaclean™ Technology, a cleaning facilitator meaning that most stains can be removed using water only. Aquaclean™ has also been treated with Safefront® Protective Shield and will not support the growth of bacteria.

All but 2 of Chieftain’s vinyl ranges carry the logo ‘Reduced Environmental Impact’ which means it can be recycled by the PVC being stripped away from the cotton backing cloth and reused. Typically, the PVC is reused in electrical wiring and Wellington Boots! Chieftain recycle on average 500kg every month their PVC with the help of P.P.H.U Kajmax in cooperation with EMABO (a member of Recovinyl) https://www.recovinyl.comƒabout-us

The backing cloth Chieftain use is also from recycled cotton. Going one step further, Chieftain’s Lionella range has 100% organic cotton backing.

Agua

Agua Fabrics have recently launch Tierra Eco which is a new and innovative 33% plant based eco-friendly faux leather ideal for interior uses.    Sadly their website doesn’t support any further information than this however, there is a small amount of information on their swatch card: This new technique makes the product strong and hardwearing yet ultimately biodegradable on disposal. There is no compromise in per− formance, and the collection has been rigorously tested and achieved an impressive 100k+ Martindale abrasion rating.

Agua are looking of ways to increase the proportion of plant-based products in our artificial leathers to reduce the use of PVC; this also helps with biodegradability at the end of the product life. An example of this new policy is our recently overhauled FurnisoG PU faux leather range which is now biodegradable.

ILIV

ILIV (smd textiles) don’t currently have any offerings in the way of recycled fabrics. Its something they are looking into. However, with that said, what they do is heavily reinvest into the local community and in return giving them very strong Corporate Social Responsibility message.

Camira

Camira are soon due to launch Oceanic, a fabric conceived and woven entirely from recycled plastic taken from the sea and rescued from the land. Oceanic is a fabric born of the SEAQUAL Initiative to achieve a waste free environment.

Here is a list of Camira’s other sustainable textiles and the yarnƒproduct they use: Flax—24ƒ7 Flax, Main Line Flax, Patina

Hemp— Hedben and Hemp

Nettle—Aztec, Nomad and Traveller

Wool—Aquarius, Blazer, Blazer Lite, Craggan, Indivduo, Landscape, Oxygen, Synergy & Synergy 170

In Summary

Now, more than ever before, there are sustainable choices for contract fabrics which meet the demanding requirements of the contract market while protecting our planet. Celebrate Earth Day every day!