If you thought this was a book about furniture, think again. This is a book about people. People who stand and talk and work and read and eat and drink and live and breathe. People who sit and type and draw and listen and laugh and maybe even cry. People like you. The way people behave is what shapes the environment around us, so it’s only by understanding how people work
that we can successfully design that environment. Producing a chair is not about drawing four legs and a seat; it’s about comprehending what it’s like to spend most of your professional life sitting down. At Senator we have...

1976 will be remembered for many things: Concorde’s first commercial flight, some computers called Apple went on the market and the world of cycling was blessed with the birth of one Christopher Andrew Hoy. However, we will always remember it for being the year that Colin Mustoe started selling office chairs to local businesses from a dusty old attic in Blackburn. When you walk around the factory today, it’s hard to believe that Senator once existed as a single person. But what Colin may have lacked in numbers, he more than made up for with vision and ambition. In the years since then, Colin...

002 Strength in numbers. 64 20% Number of countries Senator deliver to worldwide. Percentage of turnover which is produced from export. 1,000,000 Total square footage of worldwide manufacturing space. THREE Number of recycling sites in the UK. Total number of employees as of 2012.

aaa It’s been 35 years since Senator was set up, so it could be said that we’re still relatively young as a business, but youth does not equate to a lack of experience. Throughout those 35 years we’ve experienced all sorts of financial challenges, not least the austerity measures facing the world today. However we remain strong: we continue to adapt and we continue to be the UK’s number one, with a AAA credit rating. (That’s stronger than many large countries around the

We’re incredibly proud of the positive culture we’ve created here at Senator, not just in our UK offices, but in all our sites over the world. It’s a culture that’s been carefully nurtured over the years and is a result of understanding the strengths and needs of everyone in our thousand-strong workforce. This policy has not only allowed us to constantly evolve our business, but also constantly evolve our staff. Someone who joins us as a lacquer sprayer with no formal university degree could, in time, quite easily end up being the Operations Director for our Desking plant. We’re not just saying...

Watch the film at: http://www.youtube.com/ thesenatorgroup

004 There are three brands in our group.

005 lOCAL thinking on a global scale.

The last ten years has seen Senator expand across the world, and we now have a strong presence in 4 continents with more planned over the next few years. Although we’re now an international brand, we haven’t forgotten the philosophies that got us to where we are today. As such, each of our global networks act as much as a local partner, as they do an international supplier.

006 We reach the four corners of the world. Distribution Agreements Belgium Hong Kong Puerto Rico South Africa Offices / Showrooms Australia c/o Zenith Interiors Pty Ltd

We secured our first overseas contract in the United States in 2000. Today we have offices in the US, Holland, Germany, Dubai, Australia, China and India, with Senator Moscow due to open in 2013. New Zealand c/o Zenith Interiors Pty Ltd United Kingdom

Senator is now recognised and distributed all over the world, but we’re a family business, and the UK is very much home to that family. It’s where we design, it’s where we craft, it’s where we form, fold, mould, weld, grind, chop, stitch, and stock. It’s where we set up our working showrooms, manage our logistics, recycle, reuse and remanufacture our products. It’s where our home is, it’s where our heart i

008 We’RE WORKING EVERYDAY WITH SOME GREAT

009 MAXIMUM IMPACT ON YOUR BUSINESS, MINIMAL IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT.

Whilst it’s simple when written down on paper, the problem is that the more you try to do one half well, the harder it gets to satisfy the other side of the equation. So it becomes a question of balance. Consuming materials and generating carbon on the one side, weighed up against generating materials and reducing waste on the other. We’ve come a long way from our man-with-a-van days, and with premises now all over the world, it’s essential we understand the damage we could make if we don’t take the issue incredibly seriously. That doesn’t mean just recycling office paper and sourcing our materials...

We have eight rules to make sure we look after the environment in the best possible way. There are specialist businesses in this world that companies can pay to offset their carbon for them, just so they can claim to be ‘Carbon Neutral’. This doesn’t make sense to us – surely each business should be responsible for the waste that it makes? It seems you’re missing the point if your priority isn’t to look at how you can create less carbon in the first place. We wouldn’t go so far as to say we’ve ripped up the rulebook on sustainability, but we’ve certainly written our own version of it. In fact...

1. Sustainable design is integral to every product brief. 2. All redundant furniture to be recycled or reused. 3. All packaging to be reused or recycled. 4. End of life MFC to be sent to Biomass generators. 5. Minimise and reduce the amount of virgin materials used in the manufacturing process. 6. Source fabrics from managed, sustainable sources. 7. Any materials used should be fully recyclable. 8. Eliminate our carbon footprint.

We do do ca offset Watch the film at: http://www.youtube.com/ thesenatorgroup

012 We’ve been carbon neutral since 2010. Hitting that landmark of being ‘carbon neutral’ is a great achievement, but it’s not something that’s done overnight. In order for the business to continue to operate successfully, every aspect of it has to be carefully looked at to see how it can reduce its carbon usage. It’s not a case of suddenly stopping using electricity or planting a forest in a National Park somewhere; it’s about saving a bit of petrol here, reusing a few items there, making things more efficient and taking responsibility. It all adds up. Using DEFRA figures, Senator have offset...