_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ercol
▶ Ian Peers, Operations Director
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2002 family owned, with Henry Tadros, Lucian’ s great grandson, serving as Chairman and representing the fourth generation. The family has consistently prioritized people, and that’ s why we have a strong reputation and many long-serving employees.
“ There’ s a classic and functional element to the designs of our furniture, and a lot of our 1950s designs remain popular today, especially with the current resurgence of Mid-Century design principles. However, while our timeless pieces are satisfying long-term customers, we’ re also creating new products that serve the needs and preferences of today’ s generation. We introduce new products every year, but it’ s a delicate balance of retaining loyal customers but also enticing new ones.”
As wood is a natural material, there are several measures in place across ercol’ s supply chain to ensure the quality of the material.“ We use a high-end grade of timber for our products, but the raw material has all sorts of natural characteristics, and every piece of wood tells a story,” Ian says.“ There’ s lots of science involved with how we process and dry our timber, but we also strive to educate customers about the natural features that they will see in our wooden furniture.”
Considering ercol furniture is crafted from quality wood, the company’ s supply chain plays a key role in its operations.“ The majority of our timber was once almost exclusively sourced from the UK, as the business had a sawmill and kilning capacity,” Ian explains.“ However, with Dutch Elm disease rife in the UK, many sources dried up, and it became more problematic to rely on our UK supply chain. In the early 1990s, we searched further afield, eventually settling on importing elm from North America, and we purchased a majority share of a business in Minnesota to secure our timber supply.
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