For the next few months, we are running a series of blogs about our amazing team here at Chrisbeon.
We know 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone and we hugely appreciate all our staff’s efforts during the last and current lockdown. So we wanted to share with you all that they do for our customers behind the scenes.
Sales Manager
To start us off, we are chatting with Sales Manager Ryan Bratley, who has worked at the company for more than 25 years and has been a huge asset to our team.
Ryan began his career at Chrisbeon as a delivery driver when he was just 17-years-old in 1988 and worked with us for 19 years.
He then left to work for one of our suppliers, a leading UK office furniture manufacturer, which we have been purchasing products from for over 30 years.
This gave Ryan tremendous experience from the manufacturing side and, put together with his fantastic retail knowledge, it makes for an extremely experienced manager.
“I also began a career working in care with children for three years which was a very rewarding job but emotionally draining,” Ryan says. “Then Richard at Chrisbeon offered me my job back and it was like I’d never been away. I’ve now been back for about six years and I love it.”
Delivery Driver
As a delivery driver, Ryan was always out and about delivering our stationery and furniture but came to work in the office and he hasn’t looked back.
He is our guru on designing spaces and offices. Ryan often gets very little to work with from customers but produces some incredible designs with unique colour schemes.
He has a great head for space-saving ideas but also, most importantly, allowing for health and safety aspects, such as fire escapes.
“I’ve seen quite a few changes over the years,” Ryan adds. “Previously it was just 2D planning. We used to give clients an aerial view with no colour but now it has switched over so we render up a design and you can see it from all angles and add a colour palette.
“It’s an actual 3D representation of what the customer is buying. It’s brilliant for the customers to see and I really enjoy creating them. It helps the sales team when they are discussing a customer’s requirements too.”
Computer Aided Design (CAD)
Ryan also uses Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) for bespoke layouts and to ensure that pieces of furniture will fit in awkward shaped rooms.
He told us: “Once the bespoke designs are created, I will then get them costed with our manufacturers. Chrisbeon supplies a huge number of specialist size pieces of furniture, which are designed around angled walls, pillars in a room or radiators.
“Often, having a piece of furniture manufactured especially helps finish a room perfectly when standard off-the-peg furniture shapes and sizes just do not work.”
DSE Assessor
Ryan is one of our certified Display Screen Equipment assessors which means he can advise customers and ensure that they fulfil their legal duty of care obligations to all desk-based employees by setting up a workstation correctly. He has also visited many of our desking and seating manufacturers over the years for product training.
“I really enjoy my job,” said Ryan, who in his spare time is a coach at the Telford Amateur Boxing Club.
“There are different challenges every day and I meet different customers with new requirements so it’s quite diverse.
“Within the trade, I have about 30 years of experience both in retail and manufacturing and I have travelled from one end of the country to the other, visiting and selling to other retail outlets. I have a good overall view of how things are in the trade and how to bring something different to an office space.”
Stylish yet functional
Ryan is definitely the one with the vision…give him a space and he’ll create a stylish yet functional office for your company!
Thank you, Ryan, from everyone at Chrisbeon!
