New Flagship Store - Leigh-on-Sea

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Lifestyle & Mobility opens new flagship store.

A LEIGH-based mobility scoter company, which is now one of the largest in the UK, is celebrating its twenty-first birthday with the opening of a new flagship shop.

On April 12, Para Olympian Anne Wafula-Strike, MBE, opened the Basildon flagship store of Lifestyle & Mobility in the Eastgate Shopping Centre.

Ron Sverdloff, owner of the firm, was inspired to open back in 1993 after a terrible disaster struck him and his friends.

Mr Sverdloff was taking part in a nonstop cycle race, the “Beaujolais Nouveau Challenge,” as he explains: “Disaster struck at 1.20 on a beautiful moonlight night with the frost glistening over the fields.

“The team of six cyclists riding in a relay were suddenly thrown into a disastrous turmoil. A sleeping lorry driver ploughed into them seriously injured them – and leaving one a paraplegic, who eventually died from his injuries.

“I suffered a spinal injury and I lost 3” in body height. But I survived and I built a power chair with a joystick control for Peter, the paraplegic, before he died.”

It was in making these piece of equipment that Mr Sverdloff had the idea for the business: “A manufacturer in the Midlands who helped me make the chair (out of an old power chair base and a reclining Rover car seat from a scrap yard!) said they needed someone like me to start a business in Essex.

“Over the next few months, with Peter in Stoke Mandeville hospital, I made up my mind – and l set up a mobility business in a small alleyway shop in Leigh.”

Mr Sverdloff has never looked back, with bigger stores opening, and a large family of supporters and customers that have grown over the years, including the popular “Scooter Club”.

Mr Sverdloff explains: “This club took off like a rocket, because I offered monthly free day trips to all my customers. On one surprise trip to the Lakeside go-karting circuit.

“I put all the mobility scooters onto the starting grid, much to the dismay of all the youngsters who had to vacate the circuit. Then, as they watched us, scowls soon turned to uncontrollable laughter as our customers all sped off at a snail’s pace!”

Mr Sverdloff added: “This and many other Scooter Club adventures were had over the last 21 years and this has led to Lifestyle & Mobility’s success as it is today.”

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