An Interview with KBBFocus
2024 was a milestone year for Fitzroy of London, which successfully rebranded from NYMAS – North Yorkshire Mobility and Safety – to the brand that operated under the group’s umbrella. The change, says business development director Bradley Culmer, was about unifying its identity under one name, capitalising on Fitzroy of London’s established reputation and streamlining its operations while simplifying its messages. “The rebrand really enables us to continue our quest to become the most widely specified inclusive bathroom brand,” says Culmer.
The following year brought another opportunity for the company when Soho House Interior Design tasked it with providing premium-quality accessible bathrooms for renowned luxury London hotel The Ned. “At the time, inclusive bathrooms were white, blue, grey or chrome and looked very institutionalised,” says Culmer. “As a business, we have always been quite adventurous so we decided to step up to the challenge.”
The brief was to create fully complaint accessible bathrooms that were ultra-luxurious and consistent in quality and style with all the other areas of the hotel. Part of its solution was a range of bathroom fittings in an antique brass finish that were crafted to match fittings by Lefroy Brooks. “It was new territory for us,” says Culmer. “But once the Ned was completed, it became very well known because what we’d done was revolutionary and therefore we had a lot of requests from other luxury hotels and interior designers wanting something similar. So, inspired by the one-off custom products we’d designed for The Ned, we created the Fitzroy of London brand.”
As the projects piled up, so too did the number of design-led finishes in its portfolio. “The interior designers we were working with were specifying fittings from other manufacturers such as Dornbracht, Axor, Gessi and Samuel Heath, and each of those projects had a different finish we had to match. So very quickly our range of finishes became quite substantial.”
Culmer credits the work that the company did on The Ned and all the projects that followed with changing accessible bathrooms forever. “We proved that although it might be difficult, it is possible to have an accessible bathroom that is of exactly the same standard as every other bathroom. And it was an eye-opening moment.”
