Cantre Mobility: Celebrating 30 years of helping people stay mobile
This year Welsh retailer Cantre Mobility celebrated 30 years of helping people stay mobile and independent…
The family-run retailer, located just off the picturesque coast of West Wales, celebrated its milestone with a fun-filled open day earlier this year at its Carmarthen showroom. Members of the public, healthcare professionals and even a Paralympian or two were in attendance to help Cantre Mobility celebrate.
Cantre Mobility was formed in July 1995 by Nest Evans and Huw Thomas. Their mother, Euriana, had multiple sclerosis (MS) and when their father Elwyn went to a local demonstration day he met with a representative on the J.Carters (now Invacare) stand and started discussing a powered scooter/chair with Mark Hermolle (who is currently at Kymco UK)
As Nest explains: “There wasn’t a showroom in the area, the nearest being Cardiff or Chester, to go and try the products, which were both a two-hour drive away. After discussing it further, Mark informed Elwyn that they could really do with a mobility dealer in West Wales. The rest as they say, is history!”
Cantre Mobility opened within the existing showroom of the original family business, which was in the garden machinery industry. This remained its home as it expanded until relocating and expanding further with its new premises in 2015, the current head office, showroom and service centre at Y Bont in Aberaeron (previously anglicised as Aberayron), a picturesque Georgian town in West Wales.
Cantre Mobility repeated its approach with its Carmarthen location, taking up a corner of the existing showroom firstly, before expanding into premises next door, a purpose made showroom for mobility in 2012.
Following the sale of the family’s garden machinery businesses in 2024, Cantre Mobility took over the showroom next door at Carmarthen and is now one of the largest showrooms in the UK.
Family business
Family businessThe directors of Cantre Mobility, Nest Evans and Huw Thomas, both have very hands-on roles within the business. Nest has been the driving force behind the mobility business, wanting to provide a knowledgeable and unique service for customers from the day it started trading.
Nest became a specialist in seating and slings, as well as a manual handling trainer and has achieved an NVQ level 4 as an OT assessor. With her mother having MS since she was nine years old, her passion for helping others is the forefront of the ethical way that Cantre Mobility supports its local community as a business.
Huw recently took on a larger role at Cantre Mobility following the sale of the family’s existing garden machinery business, which he led, alongside Elwyn, for over 50 years.
Nest explains: “Huw does anything and everything that needs doing on a daily business within the company, using his experience to help in any which way the growing business requires.”
The other key person at Cantre Mobility is Nest’s son, Sion Evans, who officially joined the company after graduating from university in 2013, despite spending a lot of his upbringing helping his mother in the family business.
Sion is now a shareholder in the company and manages the day-to-day operation of the business. Sion’s main areas of focus are operations, ensuring the businesses’ systems support the growth of the company, as well as a very hands-on approach with power products, in particular prescriptive products.
Its 22-strong team include specialists, a supportive sales team, highly experienced and trained engineers as well as an administrative team that ensure everything runs smoothly, every day. Nest says that several members of staff have been working with Cantre Mobility for over 20 years.
Celebrating 30 years
Celebrating 30 yearsCantre Mobility marked its 30th anniversary with an open day at the newly refurbished showroom at Station Approach, Carmarthen in June.
“We are proud to be celebrating 30 years this year,” Nest comments. “We believe our friendly, knowledgeable and supportive sales team, and our excellent after-sales service, has made us stand out, and has fuelled the growth of our company over the past 30 years.”
The retailer had over 15 suppliers attending and it ran workshops throughout the day. There was also a coffee morning that Cantre Mobility held earlier that month to raise money for the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital and the local League of Friends for Glangwili Hospital.
Nest says that Cantre Mobility continually supports local and national charities, from donations to supporting beneficiaries with products and support. Its most recent open day raised hundreds of pounds for McMillan Charity locally.
The award-winning Motability retailer is a member of the Countrywide Care Network (CCN) and it also supports charities such as The Royal British Legion, The Masonic Charitable Foundation and SSAFA, the armed forces charity.
Its range of customers from across Wales includes local authorities, nursing and residential homes, architects, hospitals, occupational therapists and physiotherapists.
Cantre Mobility offers servicing on all products sold at both its Aberaeron and Carmarthen showrooms and it has many servicing contracts with local authorities and nursing/residential and private customers.
Nest explains: “Our service team are based at the Aberaeron Office and organise installations, servicing, breakdowns and repairs for the team of seven engineers and surveyors, offering 24-hour support to our contract customers.
“We are immensely proud of our work-based apprenticeships which feeds our ever-expanding engineering team and provides opportunities for young people in our area.”
Bestselling products
Next explains that Cantre Mobility’s most popular powered wheelchair is the Invacare TDX. “It is our most tried and trusted, and extremely versatile mid wheel drive, prescriptive power chair,” she says. “Our relationship with Invacare spans the full 30 years of trading and we are grateful for their continued support.”
Its best-selling mobility scooter is the Rascal Luxe. Nest adds: “We have been hugely impressed with Rascal’s LiFe lithium battery range. The confidence to give the batteries a lifetime warranty and combined with the lightweight but sturdy and comfortable Luxe, makes this the ultimate combo. We believe they have perfected the lightweight aluminium boot scooter!”
Nest says that Cantre Mobility’s relationship with its suppliers is very important and she values their support on every level. “We focus on working with suppliers that have innovative products, with excellent after-sales service,” she says. “This allows us to provide the ‘gold standard’ level of service we strive for with our customers.
“We are proud to be a main dealer for our area for notable brands such as Stannah Stairlifts, Electric Mobility, Invacare, Sunrise Medical, Primacare and Guldmann.”
Embracing e-commerce
Cantre Mobility has invested heavily in its website in recent years, Nest explains, and now it has a member of its team dedicated to building, expanding and updating it.
Nest comments: “Whilst the main focus of our business is to deal with people face-to-face at our showrooms or at the comfort of their home, we believe our website, and our social media presence gives our customers a shop window to view the products that we offer and get a feel for our business, including our fantastic team and how we operate.”
Embracing e-commerce is vitally important, Nest says, as they recognise that’s how some of their customers prefer to shop for some items. She continues: “We are very proud of our new online hire booking system.
“We do a significant number of hires, from serving visitors to our area, to facilitating hospital discharges in our local community with the equipment they need urgently.
“This allows our customers to book any time of day, and choose the equipment they need at the date they require it, whilst also reducing time and pressure on our team, and speeding up the whole process for us as a business.”
Looking ahead
Cantre Mobility’s main focus for expansion for the coming months includes developing the Carmarthen showroom into one of the leading UK mobility showrooms, Nest comments.
The plan is also to expands its installation offering to include through-floor, home lifts with its partners Stannah, “something we are aiming to bring fully in house,” she says.
Developing the business’s maintenance team is also a priority as it looks to fully refurbish reconditioned mobility equipment, and in particular mobility scooters, at both branches. As Nest explains, this currently only takes place at one head office, so it is looking to offer a full offering at both branches.
Looking at how the mobility sector as a whole Nest believes that the main challenge is losing experienced, knowledgeable and talented individuals to other industries. She says: “Its why we focus a huge amount on education within our business.
“We are very proud of our engineering side in particular, with nearly the whole team now developed within the business, and our latest apprentice now fully qualified, with another having started in April of this year.”
This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of THIIS Magazine. To subscribe to the digital edition of THIIS Magazine visit here.
