The Platform Lift Company Celebrates 10 Years of Success

It’s been ten years since local entrepreneur Sean O’Sullivan started his enterprise specialising in platform lifts, and the company celebrates its first big milestone with the lion’s share of the market and some glamorous new contract

With the head office based in a beautiful barn conversion in the Hampshire countryside, passers-by would be forgiven for thinking The Platform Lift Company was a small local business, but they couldn’t be more wrong.

When the Disability Discrimination Act came into place in 1995, Sean recognised a niche market for platform lifts and sure enough in 2001 – just months on from installing his first lift at a Pizza Hut in Birmingham – the company became involved with one of the biggest names in the world, Japanese firm ‘ITOUCHU’.

This alliance marked the beginning of the business’ expansion. With a dedicated team offering a high level of expertise, The Platform Lift Company quickly gained a reputation for quality and reliability, which enabled Sean to expand the company’s horizons overseas.

In 2006, his business model was replicated in Australia, Dubai, Belgium, Spain and Eire; designing and installing into Sydney Opera House, Yas Island Formula One race circuit in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari World, Hugo Boss, No 1 Hyde Park and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Despite the UK being the pioneer for platform lifts, statistics report that around 80% of the country is currently inaccessible to those with disabilities, which exposes the vast scale of the worldwide market.

Sean says: “We are currently the UK market leader in platform lifts and I think a large part of that is down to the fact that we have our own departments dealing with our clients, from the design stage through to installation and maintenance.

“We place a huge amount of importance upon providing a complete service and, with access to some 300 engineers, can have a maintenance team with any of our clients in under two hours. As many of our accounts are in the retail sector downtime is out of the question, because if a lift isn’t functioning, huge sections of a store are off-limits to those in wheelchairs.”

In ten years, The Platform Lift Company has gone from strength to strength, evolving to cope with the most complicated of projects - including a specialist lift for the London Underground which took three years to design and build in order to comply with stringent demands. Clearly the local company have continued to raise their game; with a high level of expertise and a fantastic reputation, Sean can rest assured that having reached double figures, this is only just the beginning…