Eastern Storage Equipment Ltd

Eastern Storage Equipment Ltd has three primary divisions with a current total of 16 dedicated, friendly and experienced staff (we are still recruiting more) ready to assist you, they are:

• ESE Direct supplies and delivers in excess of 20,000 products via our own comprehensive free mail order catalogue and our own extensively improved and unique online shop. We are currently a UK only "business-to-business" supplier, (although we plan to commence supplying Europe and the Middle East fairly soon as we receive many requests every month). We regularly process orders from a few pounds to tens of thousands of pounds and you can order by phone, fax, email, live chat, online or by post if you prefer.
• Since 1983 ESE Projects has been designing and undertaking refurbishment contracts for offices, warehouses, factories, leisure facilities, retail premises, trade counters and stores / stock rooms. Using the latest software and our extensive industry experience to ensure the most cost-effective, ergonomic and practical solutions are offered to suit your requirements and budget whether it is a thousand pounds or hundreds of thousands of pounds. We have extremely experienced specialists in office partitions, industrial partitioning systems, mobile shelving, racking, mezzanine floors and trade counters. We are able to work on your / your customer sites as part of a larger team, or as principal / sole contractors, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss your requirements in detail.
• Since 1990 Vers-a-bench has been designing and manufacturing cloakroom seating, changing room benches, lockers, wall shelves, peg rails and garment racks to suit mainly the leisure, education, health and medium to large business markets.
  We manufacture Sixteen Unique Ranges (with new ranges currently in development) most of which have many varying options / colour choices.
  These products are sold through a number of business mail order catalogues, online, via 'approved distributors, through architects specifications and direct to the end users.
  We are confident we can provide strong and competitive solutions to meet your needs, or we will design and manufacture a cost effective bespoke system to suit your exact requirements.

The following is a brief synopsis of the key milestones that have led to ESE becoming one of the leading suppliers of products to businesses across the UK.

January 1975 – Established by Brian Francis, ESE originally operated from a small summerhouse in his back garden just outside Norwich, Norfolk, primarily selling shelving and racking as he had been working in the industry for many years as the top sales person for one of the leading manufacturers.

1980 – Rapid expansion led to a number of moves, culminating in a final relocation to our current headquarters in Northumberland Street. It is from this location we have served our loyal and extremely varied customer base throughout the whole of the UK.

1983 – Supply and Installation of Mezzanine Floors, Office Partitioning and Industrial Steel Partitions were added to the ranges of products available and the offices were first refurbished to provide a working showroom of the types of products / services we could provide our clients.

1984 – First 128 page Mail Order Catalogue was taken on and the product range was expanded by approximately 4,000 different items including trucks / trolleys, signs, noticeboards, first aid kits, bins, ladders, lockers and workbenches.

1990 – Cloakroom Seating manufacturing division was established and the first range of cloakroom benches were designed and sold primarily through mail order catalogue companies.

1997 – First Website was launched, it was a fairly basic Brochure site by today's standard but was pretty good for it's time (most competitors did not even have a website).

1999 – Brian's eldest son, Simon took over as Managing Director (having started in 1984 in the warehouse and gained experience across the business first like many of our team), since then turnover has more than doubled, the business has expanded beyond expectations, the customer base has more than trebled and ESE continues to grow year on year.

2000 – Full Online Ordering Website was launched containing all 7,500+ products from our 300 page mail order catalogue at that time (we also launched and licensed a white label version for another mail order catalogue to use).

2003 – The Changing Room Bench ranges we manufacture were fully redesigned and cost engineered in conjunction with some of our Architect and Main Contractor clients to provide ranges that suited their requirements as well as providing common 'core components' across the ranges to aid versatility, industry leading seat strength, easy on-site assembly and the best possible range of 'standard sizes'.

2004 – Series of independent websites were created for each division to enable much more product information to be displayed specific to their 'core products' www.esedirect.co.uk - www.eseprojects.co.uk - www.cloakroomseating.co.uk and as a result online business more than doubled in that year.
ESE continues to invest in technology to improve customer service and enable the business to outstrip its projected growth. We also entered a number of Regional and National Awards and were lucky enough to have won or been finalists in more than 80% of all those entered.

2008 – Was the best year in our 33 year history, with increased sales, significantly increased numbers and wider spread of customers across the UK (only 4 postal districts not supplied to) and we now supply to more than 190 different industry types.

2009 – Spent 6 months analysing all our product ranges and suppliers performance to ensure we offered the Best Products at the Best Prices and following the analysis a more concise industry leading 352 page catalogue was compiled / designed in house from scratch.

2010 - Launched the all new mail order catalogue, along with an in house designed brand new and very advanced online ordering website which has seen sales significantly increase again (August 2010 has been the best month on record in the history of ESE).
We have also taken on 3 new staff members to cope with the increased demand and will be recruiting again soon.

2011 – A new range of Stainless Steel Cloakroom Seating with compact laminate seats will be launched. Our entire IT system / software will be upgraded to enable larger volumes of orders / enquiries to be handled and our 2011 catalogue will contain around 80 extra pages of seriously competitive quality products.

Environmentally Aware - We take our responsibility to the environment seriously and are committed to Reduce – Reuse – Recycle wherever possible, including:

• Designing our clients projects with energy efficiency in mind wherever possible.
• Using technology to Reduce travel, printing, paper and consumable waste.
• Recycle / Reuse metal, wood and cardboard packaging etc wherever possible.
• Planning deliveries and site visits to reduce use of fuel / CO₂ emissions.
• Employees are encouraged to cycle / use public transport wherever practical.
• Monitoring water / energy use and introduce efficiencies where possible.

Socially Responsible - We strongly believe in giving something back and encouraging a good life / work balance for our team (the majority have been with us for 20+ years).

• Our Directors give their time freely to work with Local charities such as www.NelsonsJourney.org.uk and we encourage our dedicated team to do the same.
• Our team is our 'extended family' we encourage family ethics and helping each other in / out of work.
• We donate annually to deserving Local community programmes / charities through Norfolk 100.
• We Recycle ink cartridges, laser toners and mobile phones for Charity.
• We sponsor a Local football team and other local events when funds permit.

Economically Sustainable - Like all businesses we have to make a profit to maintain our proud history (Est 1975) and continue to employ as many people as we can, however huge profits are not our driver, we strive to:

• Treat all customers and suppliers 'as we would wish to be treated'.
• Develop long term partnerships that are to the mutual benefit of all concerned.
• Work in an open and honest way ensuring we provide the best customer service / prices at all times.
• Continually invest in technology and our staff to 'improve the customer experience' and make it as easy and trouble free as possible to do business with us.

If you are in doubt about the suitability of any product please contact us for unbiased, friendly and free advice.

In addition to our office sales team, we have extremely experienced and friendly field sales engineers happy to visit you whether you are in Norwich, Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Colchester, Chelmsford, Cambridge, Kings Lynn, Peterborough, Harlow, London, Luton, Stevenage, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton, Corby, Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Maidstone, Tonbridge, Edenbridge, Crawley, Guildford, Slough or just about anywhere else for that matter, and provide free no obligation advice / quotations.