Retailer Spotlight: How Rehability is helping its customers live independently
In May this year Rehability celebrated its 10th anniversary providing mobility equipment and occupational therapy assessments in north-east Suffolk. THIIS speaks to Veronica Downing, Director of Rehability and an occupational therapist with over 40 years’ experience
Based in Halesworth, north-east Suffolk, Rehability celebrated 10 years of helping customers source daily living aids in May this year. For Director Veronica Downing, it offers a chance to reflect on a career spent helping people with their mobility over 40 years.
Prior to establishing Rehability, Veronica’s experience of the mobility industry was as an occupational therapist working in the NHS and social services.
Veronica explains: “In the days before online shopping and high street mobility stores, it was the OTs that advised people on aids to daily living and also devised adapted daily living items to enable people with functional loss to achieve greater independence in their daily living. For more complex adaptations occupational therapists often worked with REMAP, a charity that provides custom make equipment for disabled people.”
When Veronica left the statutory services and began working independently, she had her first experience of using suppliers directly.
Growing Rehability
The business came about when Veronica and her husband moved to north-east Suffolk and bought a small farm with outbuildings in the town of Chediston in 2002 that had the potential to be converted in commercial premises.
The idea, Veronica explains, was to establish a disability assessment centre where she could assess people’s mobility issues with equipment that may provide solutions to their difficulties.
Completed in 2007, the barn conversion provided this facility with a showroom and a place to purchase small aids to daily living, manual wheelchairs, profiling beds and riser-recliner chairs. It was named Rehability.
In the first few years, Rehability was part of Veronica’s main company, Veronica Downing Associates, which provided medico-legal expert witness services, but in 2013, the opportunity to rent a suitable shop in the market town of Halesworth, two miles away, came up, and Rehability (East Anglia) was registered as a company independently of Veronica Downing Associates. The shop formally opened for business in May 2013.
High street showroom
The showroom is located on a busy high street in Halesworth. Its local demographic is rural and largely elderly and, as Veronica explains, its customers like to come into a shop to see, ask and try. It is conveniently situated opposite a public library and customers can park with their Blue Badge outside the shop door.
As the showroom is close to the Norfolk border customers come from across Norfolk and Suffolk from towns such as Southwold, Aldeburgh, Leiston, Bungay, Beccles, Framlingham and Woodbridge.
Veronica explains: “The shop which became available was previously a white goods retailer with a good-size floor area which was kitted out with plenty of power-points and slatted racking on the walls for display and shelving, good lighting and carpet-tiled flooring.
“The entrance door with level threshold was wide enough to take wheelchairs and scooters, and the shopfront is two large plate-glass windows.”
Veronica states: “The aim was to sell mobility equipment in a shop that people wanted to come into and enjoy looking at and trying out products with advice that recognised their needs and not a hard-sell for the product.”
Large wall-mounted signage was assembled so that people could clearly see where products are, such as ‘Seating’, ‘Bathing’ and ‘Small Aids to Daily Living’.
An attractive window display is often seasonal, decorative and fun, with Rehability participating in town centre events such as the Scarecrow Week in October half-term.
In May Rehability will celebrate its 10-year anniversary with its window display, as well as local advertising and a party.
OT expertise
Over the 10 years’ it has been in business Rehability has gradually extended its product offering to customers.
Veronica feels her experience as an OT has been invaluable in helping to recognise the needs of her customers. She continues: “As an OT qualifying in 1976, I have always been acutely aware of how clinical so much disability equipment looked in terms of design and purpose, probably because it came out of a need to solve a ‘medical problem’ due to illness or injury.
“Wherever I have worked, in neuro-rehab, with the elderly and with people with developmental and learning disabilities, I have wanted to enable them to do and achieve in the most normal way possible.
“Design and looks are therefore very important for mobility equipment and the place where you go to shop for such stuff needs to have the feel of a normal shop.”
It is also important, Veronica says, that her staff are knowledgeable and understanding about customers’ mobility and functional loss issues and have the interpersonal skills to engage with customers appropriately, flexibly and non-judgmentally.
“My staff spend a lot of time with customer enquiries,” explains Veronica. “If we don’t have it in the shop, we will always endeavour to get an item in rather than sell something that doesn’t really meet the customer’s needs but happens to be in the shop.”
Veronica admits she could do with more space to show off her product range but as the premises is rented, they are limited in what they can do to improve or extend their facilities.
She adds: “What we are good at is using the space that we have as effectively as possible and to display equipment so that customers can browse if they want to and ask questions or for equipment to be demonstrated when they are ready to.”
Customer care
The showroom is open six days a week, with two days being half-days, and shop hours covered by two part-time staff, Beverley and Kathy. They are very people-orientated with backgrounds in care and alternative therapies, explains Veronica.
“Both know how to make customers feel at ease and they have a sensitivity that is necessary when working with elderly people and those with additional and different needs,” she says.
“Their product knowledge is good too and they know our suppliers and the key people to speak with. Any queries or problems that they feel are beyond their expertise, they will contact me, or our technician if it is to do with scooters and wheelchairs.”
Another key worker at Rehability is Jonathan, who has direct contact with all customers who purchase scooters and powerchairs and will either demonstrate and enable customers to try out a scooter or powerchair from the shop or at their home.
Veronica adds: “If people have multiple or complex issues, the staff will always refer to me (with my OT hat on) for additional advice or to ensure that their recommendations are appropriate.”
Rehability has built a solid reputation for its high standard of customer care. Veronica states that locals will often call in just to say hello! She comments: “Also, professionals, such as other OTs working in the community, carers and care agencies are confident in referring to Rehability knowing that they will be given sound advice and not just sold a product.”
Bestselling products
Perhaps, not surprisingly, considering its largely elderly demographic, products such as mobility scooters, manual wheelchairs, rollators and riser-recliner chairs are popular at Rehability.
Veronica adds: “We now keep a wider range of makes and suppliers than we did prior to COVID; in part due to difficulties due to supply issues. Smaller items for daily living and incontinence products are also much needed.”
Rather than being loyal to one particular brand for different product types there are different options available from a variety of suppliers, Veronica explains, because customers like to have a choice and they have varied budgets.
Rehability also sells a lot of good condition second-hand scooters, which have often been bought through Rehability in the first place. While it sells all sorts of mobility equipment it does not sell stairlifts. “There are enough companies that do and that can provide the 24-hour back-up service required after installation.” Instead the business has a referral scheme with Ransome Mobility in Ipswich.
Before Christmas, and with the scare about the cost-of-living crisis and the price increases on so many products, Veronica says that they decided to put a budget-priced single-motor riser-recliner chair in its Christmas window – the Wilcare Riva.
Veronica explains: “This is an armchair which looks very ‘Art-Deco’ in style but has appealed to several customers who have tried it out, particularly those needing assistance into standing, and the chair has not compromised on comfort.”
By keeping the cost of this chair to less than £1,000, including delivery and set-up, it has meant that some of its elderly customers or their family members have been able to afford to buy a riser-recliner chair. Veronica adds: “It does not suit everyone, as one-size does not fit all, and we do not compromise on our assessment before the customer purchases.”
Rehability show home
The barn conversion had to be rebuilt and repaired after a devastating fire destroyed it in December 2017. At that point Veronica decided to change the emphasis on it being an Independent Living Assessment Centre and converted it to a Show Home instead.
This would demonstrate the sorts of homely adaptations that could be done in a timber-framed Suffolk house, she felt, and would help to better connect with the needs of its local elderly demographic.
The show home was opened, after its rebuild, in November 2019 by Dr Therese Coffey, who was, at the time, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
By March 2020 it had to close because of the COVID-19 pandemic before re-opening again in 2022.
Veronica states: “There has been a trickle of people coming to see and enquire about specific adaptations, in particular looking at options for bathrooms; the Clos-o-mat toilet and the Stiltz Duo Plus through-floor lift and Thyssen Flow stairlift, all of which can be used. I am able to use the show home facilities for assessments, as well.”
Dealing with rising costs
Veronica admits that while she is generally an optimistic person she is also realistic, and in retail, she says, no consecutive months are the same!
“We have seen what has happened to some mobility equipment retailers already this year,” comments Veronica. “Like many retailers on the high street, we are acutely aware that costs of manufacturing are going up, maintaining the retail premises is more expensive and most of our customers are feeling the pinch in their pockets too.”
Rehability has always kept a range of products from the less expensive to the higher priced and staff, Veronica states, will always discuss with the customer the reasons for the range of prices.
“Rehability does not promote itself by offering the cheapest products on the market. We pride ourselves on providing a professional service, appropriate advice and the best possible customer service before and after purchase. You can’t get that with online sales.”
Branching into eCommerce was something she considered over the years, but Veronica felt that ultimately it was not economically viable or particularly fair to customers.
She explains: “We do not have the premises to start up online sales and pack- and-dispatch, and to be honest, if I haven’t seen the customer, their disability or functional loss, measured them for fit and assessed for suitability to meet their needs, I do not want the wasted time, costs and effort of purchases that have to be returned.
“I have visited too many homes with my OT hat on where people have bemoaned the fact that they didn’t come to us first rather than ordering online what they thought they needed or the advert had persuaded them that they needed.”
Weathering the storm
Taking a wider view, Veronica is confident that there will always be a need for the mobility and independent living sectors. She comments: “People will still age and become frail and people will continue to be disabled by illness, medical and developmental conditions.
“Statutory services cannot and do not provide the services and equipment to meet peoples’ needs as our population increases and we live longer. We don’t live longer lives as fit and strong people, but we become more reliant on ‘kit’ or ‘tools’ to enable us to manage independently and safely as our physical and mental strength declines.
“I think we have to try and weather the storm of rising costs and reduced personal circumstances and encourage our customers to future-proof their lives by buying equipment that has the potential to adapt to their changing abilities.”
Veronica points to an example of an older customer who recently came to the shop with his wife. He had refused to buy a new armchair with powered assist to standing two years ago, she says, only to now find that after having a stroke, that he needs that facility – but he now doesn’t want to spend several hundred pounds on another chair when his present one is still ‘new’.
“Mobility retailers have the potential to assist their customers to spend wisely and prudently and retailers should not be seeing ‘pound signs’ in front of their eyes from selling mobility products or viewing their customers with mobility needs as cash-cows!”
Rehability is intent on continuing to remain viable and providing a specialist resource in rural Suffolk. While Veronica admits that improving the Rehability website will be “this year’s project” first the team are going to celebrate 10 years on Halesworth’s high street and no doubt can look forward to many more years to come.
