FURNITURE
Imaginative designs for therapeutic settings
Teal LifeCare designs, develops, and manufactures furniture to meet the specific needs of service-users with dementia, challenging behaviour, learning disabilities, eating disorders, autism, and a variety of mental health conditions. With several ‘innovative’ products launched at May’s Design in Mental Health 2019 exhibition, and its interior design expertise significantly boosted by last year’s recruitment of a new manager for Interior Solutions Development, the brand is going through a busy time. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
Teal was acquired by The Senator Group in 2009. Its Lower Darwen headquarters in Lancashire houses a sizeable factory, complemented by modern machinery, a warehouse, and offices housing a Design Department, R&D personnel, and a Customer Services Support team. Having originally predominantly produced furniture for acute healthcare settings, Teal has subsequently diversified into designing, developing, and manufacturing, specialist furniture for mental healthcare settings under its ‘LifeCare’ brand. Teal HealthCare and Teal LifeCare were later joined by a third ‘brand’, Teal Living, which offers ‘design-led care home furniture and turnkey solutions’.
It was mainly to discuss some of the recent developments at Teal LifeCare – which has launched a number of new products this year – that I had travelled to the Lower Darwen showroom to meet the division’s Marketing manager, Nigel Davis, and Interior Solutions Development manager, Vicky Taylor. While Nigel Davis has been with Teal for almost a decade, Vicky Taylor only joined in February 2018, having previously spent 14 years at Chorley-based architect, Gilling Dod, latterly as an associate interior designer. The practice is well-known for its mental healthcare design expertise, and while there she became familiar with furniture from many of the leading suppliers, bringing with her to Teal both considerable interior design expertise, and a strong insight into how to appropriately furnish a broad spectrum of mental health facilities.
Reason for re-location Nigel Davis, who said gaining such expertise had been a ‘huge plus’ for the team, began our discussions by telling me a little about Teal’s three divisions. He said: “The three brands – Teal
HealthCare, Teal LifeCare, and Teal Living, evolved over time, with Teal LifeCare becoming a brand in its own right in 2012.” Although Teal had supplied small quantities of mental healthcare-specific furniture previously, 2012 marked its first real drive – with the establishment of Teal LifeCare – into a market in which it is now extremely well-known. Teal Living was formed a short time later, further widening the product range, and ensuring that the business was able to provide furniture across all sectors of health and social care. Although the three Teal divisions operate autonomously, Vicky Taylor explained that there are ‘considerable overlaps’. She said: “For instance, there are a very sizeable number of furniture items in the Teal HealthCare range which would look perfectly at home in a care home setting.”
Teal LifeCare’s Interior Solutions Development manager, Vicky Taylor.
Roku is now available in what Teal LifeCare dubs ‘a contemporary new colour palette’.
‘Crossover’ an advantage Nigel Davis believes this ‘crossover’ is a strong selling point. He elaborated: “Where a customer needs mental health furniture, but also has residential care within its portfolio, we have products that address both areas.” Vicky Taylor added: “For example, Trusts that largely come to us for Teal LifeCare products occasionally also need to access our HealthCare product ranges – such as overbed tables for Older Adult wards. Some of the combined health and social care NHS Trusts indeed buy furniture from two, or all three, of the Teal brands.” The annual Design in Mental Health conference and exhibition is always a good showcase for product manufacturers, and this year, at a new, larger venue, Coventry’s Ricoh Arena, the Teal LifeCare stand was ‘busier than ever’. Vicky Taylor expanded: “We had a lot of interest, as we were launching some long- anticipated and innovative products. We also talked to a number of Trusts during the product development phase, so they were no doubt keen to see the finished items ‘in the flesh’.”
THE NETWORK | OCTOBER 2019 21
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