It's all about the chairs!

Golborne Life first met Susan Osbourne in 2013 when she had just opened her shop at 83 Golborne Road selling antique furniture and homewares, much of it decorated by hand. Now, things have taken a different direction and it's all about reupholstering French and English antique chairs – and the business has a new workshop and four more employees.

The shop is still operating, but Susan is also employing four people as upholsterers at her workshop on Southern Row, all working flat out to reupholster the chairs that an eager public are keen to buy.

"To be honest," Susan says, "we were surprised that this side of the business took off so much. We're buying 19th century chairs in France – we have someone scouting those out for us – then we bring them over here in their "naked" state, which means they have some basic upholstering and a calico or hessian finish.

"Customers can then pick a chair and choose the style of fabric and upholstery that they want. We can provide the fabric, or customers can bring in their own. As well as single chairs, we're also working with sofas, chaise longues and footstools.

"We're delighted to be in a position to employ four people in our workshop, and we have enough work to keep us going for the foreseeable future, with new orders coming in all the time.

"When we started out, we took on two students from Kensington and Chelsea College and they still work for us in the shop on a part-time basis. Now that we have another four people working in our workshop, we're really pleased to feel that we're part of the community in this way, providing work opportunities for people."

susanosbourne.co.uk
83 Golborne Road, W10 5NL
020 8969 6255

Read what we wrote about Susan Osbourne in 2013.