SM Rentals

While SM Rentals revels in enhancing the comfort of others, the company’s Operations Champion David De Mott is delighted his team have found themselves as beneficiaries of such an approach at Big Yellow.

The benevolent business, which loans clinically accredited specialist seating to the NHS and other healthcare providers to boost the physical wellbeing and spirits of patients, insists it has been superbly cared for since deciding to take space at Big Yellow in 2021.

“If ever we want something or need help with something, the staff will always do whatever they can to accommodate our needs,” said David. “Everything within their means – be it a short-notice request for more space or signing for deliveries – is done quickly and with customer ease in mind.”

It is a level of service and care that resonates with the ethos of SM Rentals, which is headquartered in Limavady, Northern Ireland but services its London and south-east England-based clients from Big Yellow. 

“Our business is not about money or the company’s bottom line,” added David. “We are focused on giving individuals comfort, dignity and freedom, and our therapeutic chairs help people – whether recovering from a major operation or with a debilitating condition – get to spend more time with their families.

“In the hospital system, if a person can sit up in a chair on their own for six hours, they’re deemed fit to return home and our chairs, which are tailored to the patient, assist them to do that.

“Sadly, if you walk around some hospitals you tend to see people either lying in beds or slumped over in chairs and that’s usually because the chairs that are provided are either uncomfortable or unfit for purpose or there’s no chair at all for them to use. 

“The effect of our chairs is quite profound – we get people back home and in doing so reduce the number of people needlessly lying in beds and on wards, and, in turn, reduce waiting lists and save the NHS time and money.”

Although operating in diverse fields, there is certainly no shortage of synergy in SM Rentals and Big Yellow’s modus operandi.

Both offer their clients bespoke solutions – be it tailoring chair configurations based on detailed patient assessments or upscaling or downscaling storage space depending on a customer’s requirement – and do so at an affordable price point.

“Our people who take our chairs out to hospitals are experts in their field,” continued David, while explaining SM Rentals utilises its multiple Big Yellow units for the storage, servicing and cleaning of its chairs. “They’re not delivery people or salespeople; they’re trained to meet with patients, assess their requirements in terms of their size and condition and decide which of our chairs is the best for them. They’ll then take the pre-adjusted seats directly to the wards and even help transport the patient into the chair to ensure it really is the best possible fit. 

“Similarly, a large part of our decision to remain with Big Yellow is down to flexibility,” concluded David, stressing the savings SM Rentals delivers to the NHS, given the £20 daily rental of a specialist seat pales into insignificance when compared to the circa £700 per day it costs to house a patient in hospital.

“We’re still growing as a company so self-storage is a good fit for us because we can change our space depending on the number of chairs we have in circulation at any one time.

“The cost is cheaper than traditional warehousing too, especially considering the location of the  store which allows us easy access to our London clients.”

For more information, visit smrentals.co.uk/