The Surrey Down Company is the British arm of a global natural bedding company Richard Behr & Co. The company is famously known for its work in supplying the hotel sector with customers including Marriott Hotels, Ritz Carlton and Hilton. ufurnish.com Co-Founder and CEO, Deirdre McGettrick virtually sat down with Surrey Down’s, Kerri Felgate, to learn more about the inspiration behind their brand and business.
Q1. Surrey Down has a strong reputation for its high quality products and customer service. Can you tell us more about the background of the business, its heritage and how it has become a success?
Richard Behr & Co was founded in 1917 in Hamburg as a traditional trading company. The company is still owned and run by the same family and is now in the 4th generation. Today Richard Behr & Co is one of the biggest producers of natural filled duvets and pillows in the World producing over 3.5millions pillows and 1 million duvets per year. Key to our company and its success is the fact that everyone cares so much about the products we make. Our products are still made in the traditional way and are still hand finished by skilled crafts people. We have an in-house laboratory which ensures only the highest standard of materials are used and every shipment of feather and down that arrives at our factory is tested for quality before it can be used in production. As a company we have strong relationships built with our customers over many decades and we strive everyday to bring excellent products to the market and go that extra mile for each and every customer.
Q2. You’ve just launched a new website for Surrey Down which features so many amazing product lines such as Canadian Goose Down and English Duck Down. Can you share more detail about the amazing products Surrey Down offers?
Our Canadian Goose Down is one of our favourite products featuring 100% Canadian Goose Down encased in a 330TC 100% Cotton shell. This makes for a light but excellent performing duvet. Down has excellent insulating properties making it the perfect filling for pillows and duvets. Down is considerably lighter than feather and the structure of down gives it the ability to trap a lot of air leading to its high thermal insulation properties.
We offer products for all price points from the Canadian Goose Down to a Duck Feather & Down and in every range we have matching pillows in varying sizes and firmness.
One of my personal favourite products is our range of Down Surround Pillows. These pillows are unique in the fact that they have an inner core filled with feather to add support for the head, but the outer chamber of the pillows is a high percentage of down so the pillow is soft for the neck. We offer these pillows in Duck Down, Goose Down, Hungarian Goose Down and Canadian Goose Down.
Q3. Your company has a great reputation for customer service and that’s a key area of the business that you run. Could you share with us how Surrey Down has built its reputation and what the key to your success are?
In the UK we have a great team of staff and we all strive to offer an exceptional customer experience. When a customer calls in they get straight through to a person who will be able to assist them with any enquiry. We strive to respond to email enquiries within 48 hours and work very hard to give our customers a seamless flow from point of order right through to delivery. All products are usually dispatched within 24 hours and on a next day delivery service. We work closely with our delivery partners to ensure they keep the customer up to date as to when their parcel will arrive.
We work with clients such as Harrods and high levels of customer service are necessary to build a good working relationship with these clients. We feel every customer should be treated as if they are our top client and we want customers to continue coming back to our company and repurchasing their bedding when required. We have clients who have been personally purchasing their bedding from us for over 20 years and they come back and rebuy the same product every time as they love the quality so much.
Q4. Getting the perfect night’s sleep is so critical for us all. Can you share with our readers how Surrey Down products will help them achieve that?
At Surrey Down we believe that your bedding is critical to ensuring you get a great nights sleep. We test our products rigorously and hold many certifications to ensure our bedding is the best it can. This includes the Oeko-Tex 100 Class 1 standard which is a worldwide testing and certification procedure for textiles. Our Class 1 standard means our products are even suitable for babies and children who can have the most sensitive skin.
All of our customer service agents are trained to help you decide what is the best bedding for your needs. Everyone likes to sleep under different products and likes their pillow in a certain way - we have trained our staff to ask the questions and be able to guide the customer to the right product for them.
Natural bedding is a joy to sleep under, and no matter how our customers like to sleep we have a product that will fit their needs.
Q5. What’s next for Surrey Down, any big plans for the next 12 months that you can share?
We are actively working on a new product range that I cannot share right now but this is something we hope to bring to the market in Q4 of 2021. Our new website is a focus for us this year and we will be adding more informative pages to the site to help people choose the right bedding from our extensive range. For what has been a challenging 12 months for most businesses we are ever striving forward and continuing to make our bedding the very best it can be.
Surrey Down has a strong reputation for its high quality bedding products. To search and discover products from Surrey Down and many more amazing furniture retailers across the entire market, simply click here.
