About us

     

My name is Adam Michael Lee and I am the Production Director of Redlion Upholstery ltd. I would like to give you a bit of a back story to how my family run company was founded and continue to perform our work with high degree of care and consideration to our staff and environment. Our morals and ethics driving the belief that British is better.

I dabbled at different trades after higher education not being to my liking. I settled in a Vehicle Bodyshop, Spending 7 years in total there I moved into the management team. My roles included running the parts department, customer services and the workshop itself. We had a very strong close nit group in the management team and work was a joy at times. The camaraderie and team spirit the closest thing that I found to match my Saturday afternoons on the rugby pitch.

The business grew and thrived as a result, unfortunately things began to change. This lead to my departure and I began work for my cousins Lee and Ross Coton who own Rosebay furniture.

They import furniture from china and export it all around the uk, so my job consisted of unloading containers and loading vans. Shall we say the quality of the Chinese work isn’t always to the highest standard. More often than not I would end up repairing the damaged sofas, leading to me looking at what they were made of. Lee and myself Decided that we could do better, so the idea began.

In 2012 we got an Upholsterer in to help us start manufacturing ourselves, staring at 20-30 sofa’s a week alongside warehouse work. The Upholsterer left abruptly, I had only been prepping the sofas. I had to learn fast as we had built up regular customers that wanted our product. Hannah my wife went to the seamstress who did our outwork to learn how to sew on an industrial machine. This meant we could have an in house sewer. Continuing to produce sofa’s for Rosebay furniture we took on more staff and in 2017 decided to create Redlion Upholstery. Improving our design so we were more productive we were now making 50 sofas a week.

Redlion Upholstery was run on a commission basis building ourselves up with the safety net that was Rosebay. 2020 we felt ready to split the companies, still working side by side but Redlion was ready to take the stabilisers off. Unfortunately for all Covid 19 hits the world, with this speed bump we decided to delay the venture. Over the next year despite the tough circumstances the company still managed to make a profit, making our decision to go ahead on march 2021 and easy one.

We now produce up to a 100 sofas a week employing 5 seamstresses and 3 upholsterers. All of our materials are sourced from Uk companies. Wholesale sofas being our bread and butter, we have explored other avenues from building custom furniture, to seat pads for existing garden furniture. Made covers for narrow boats and making seats for rock and roller beds to go in campervans.

We often have surplus material from big contracts, so we can sometimes offer the sofas at a discounted rate. Keep an eye on our social media as you never know when something you like may pop up. We also can build custom furniture, we try and keep the base design to our current models. This keeps the price down for the customer and keeps it simple for us. If you are like myself and once you have a sofa you like you don’t want to change it. We recommend our deluxe option. For those of you that change your furniture like the paint on the walls, our basic option will be sufficient.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, we hope it gives you a better idea how our company is run. Our small British team making Quality British products.

Adam Lee

Production Director