Beings as we haven’t made a blog post in an age, I thought I would delve deep into the recesses of my brain to bring you some updates regarding what has been going on behind the scenes.

As mentioned in our last blog post; Working with OT’s for Innovation in Daily Living Aids, we have been working alongside various occupational therapists to get an outside perspective on current and future products to ensure that our target audience is getting a product that would efficiently assist them in day to day life, and, as we’ve discovered, more! More updates to this will be forthcoming in future blog posts (subscribe to the blog, here), but I can assure you, there have been some excellent discoveries through the use of Tenura daily living aids that you will be able to try in your own home or occupational therapy centre.

You all may have been wondering where our next line of Tenura daily living aids is. I can assure you that they are on their way. You can explore the current range on our website now. I must remain tight-lipped on the new range, as I am not the one who calls the shots on when they are announced (you must ask the organ grinders for that). When they are announced to the public, you will certainly hear about them, and not just from us either, there are a few outside-professionals already in the know, due to tests and feedback to help us develop them. We are very happy with them and should be an astounding evolution in daily living aids.

Is there anything you are hoping to see in the future of low-tech, daily living aids? Please connect with us through our social accounts; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, we love to hear your thoughts. To stay up to date with Tenura daily living aid releases, subscribe to the blog.

Since the OT exhibition in Glasgow we have been looking at developing some of the newer products in the Tenura range. I have been working alongside Occupational Therapists and asking them;

• How did useful did they find Tenura products?
• What changes to our products could we make so that clients get the most out of our range?
• What other products should we try create and develop?

In the search for answers, we gave a sample of all our products to the Merlin MS Centre in Cornwall.

http://­www.­merlinmscentre.­org.­uk/

The Merlin centre provides a range of expert care, support and therapies to people with Multiple Sclerosis and other neurological conditions.

They have been very helpful in giving us an evaluation of the Tenura range. One person in particular is Kath Smith, who is an Occupational Therapist at The Merlin Centre. Kath mentioned that she found the Tenura products we sent really useful in the centre, and products such as the Tenura Extreme mats in particular have been used not only as mats for trays, but in activities in physiotherapy sessions, more on this soon.

We believe that the best way to develop our range is for us to work directly alongside Occupational Therapists, as their experience and insight will be invaluable in the innovation of current and future Tenura daily living aids.

COT 37th Annual Conference and Exhibition at the SECC, 18th-20th June

The College of Occupational Therapists Annual Conference and Exhibition is into it’s 37th year, which is a phenomenal achievement, showing just how important the work of OT’s is.

Not only does it give OT’s the opportunity to learn new skills, share findings and find out about more opportunities in the profession, they can also test and try out new products from a vast range of companies who manufacture/­invent new innovations in the industry.

This is where we come in…. we will be exhibiting this year and displaying new products, as well as informing people about our new anti-microbial material, which you can read about in one of our previous posts; Tenura Anti Microbial Silicone: An Innovation in Daily Living Aids.

The exhibition will be held at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow, Scotland, and will run from the 18th of June, until the 20th June.

You will be able to come and see us at stand 79, Ben will be there to meet and greet all visitors.

We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Established as far back as 1917, The American Occupational Therapy Associationis a professional body that addresses the interests and concerns of practitioners or students within occupational therapy to help improve the quality of these services.

While primarily American, it is proud to have members all over the world, consisting of therapists, assistants and students, all working together to improve the access to health care services for consumers, while helping their members professional development.

AOTA not only provides resources to meet these goals, but also set the standards to ensure high quality, standing in as an advocate for the improvement of health care.

Regarding Tenura and our dealings with AOTA? Well this will be our second year at their annual conference and expo, located at the San Diego Convention Centre, in California, running from Thursday the 25th until Sunday the 28th of April. We will be exhibiting alongside our exclusive distributor of Tenura in the US, Maddak, one of the largest retailers of daily living aids in America.

Judging by the success of last years exhibit, we can be sure that, with our recent updates, we will have much, much more to again catch the attention of visitors to the AOTA conference.

During the welcome ceremony, between the hours of 4 and 5.30pm, Aron Ralston, Adventurer and subject of the film ‘127 Hours’ which stars James Franco, a film based on Aron’s unfortunate experiences while canyoneering, where he had to amputate his own arm to free himself from a boulder that trapped him. Ralston will be one of the keynote speakers, and will talk about that experience and occupational therapies role in his recovery.

If you haven’t seen ‘127 hours’, I would recommend it highly, it’s a truly excellent movie.

We will be monitoring all the usual channels as best as we can ( I am in the UK, so the time difference is quite large ), but still, we will be Tweeting before the event too, so please let us know if you will be in attendance, and I will keep people up to date with where our stand is.

It would be great to see you all!

Tenura on Twitter

Tenura on Facebook

We are exhibiting at Naidex National again this year, and we’re really looking forward to seeing all the great products and innovations, meeting many great people, and making many new connections.

Naidex National is the largest disability, rehabilitation and homecare event in the UK, with over 300 exhibitors, enabling them, and the many visitors it brings, to trade and meet all in one, very large complex. Events such as this help innovate many products and services, building a brighter future for many, many people.

Tenura will be exhibiting from start to finish, bringing with us our new and present range of products, with friendly advice for anyone who comes looking for it. We hope to be able to give and take experience to help ourselves and others to come up with more ideas, allowing us to innovate our range of daily living aids, and hopefully give other people fresh perspectives on their ideas and products.

We will be live on the social networks, updating visitors and exhibitors to keep up to date with where we are, what we’ve seen and who we’ve met.

Follow and join us if you haven’t already, to help keep you up to date. You never know, you may get to meet some of the gang!

We will bring more details such as stand number, nearer the time.

We look forward to seeing many of you there!

Tenura on:

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We’ve been looking forward to unleashing our new material for quite some time, as this heralds a new era in daily living aids, making Tenura products pro-active in combating germs.

Tenura anti slip children’s table mats are the first product to be created from the new Tenura Anti-Microbial silicone, which carries a large range of hygiene benefits, Helping to protect against a wide range of bacteria, such as MRSA, E-coli and Klebsiella, while also protecting against mould and fungi. Tenura anti-microbial silicone also carries all the benefits of our old material, retaining it’s adhesive qualities, and is still washable, with its properties returning once dry.

Since creating Tenura anti slip children’s mats we’ve been giving samples out to relatives for the kids to try, and the reception has been very good, they’ve served their purpose very well, as well as some extras ( we found one stuck to the telly, though fortunately, the telly was unharmed, another victory for Tenura! ).

We have also recently added Tenura moulded cup holders to the site as well, and you will be soon finding both these products on other retailers websites also, including Amazon, who have recently come on board.

We will slowly but surely be rolling out all products updated with our new material in due course, showing that you can add additives which help to increase benefits and retain cost efficiency, rather than adding additives to already poor materials, that keep costs down, and increase health risks.

It comes to that time again were we have had to alter our postage prices, although this time it has pros as well as cons.

Royal Mail have upped their postage costs, causing us to change again!

However, instead of two different charges, we now have one flat rate, meaning you will save a bit on smaller orders under 1kg, unless your orders are over £50, then it will be sent out to you free of charge!

Postage by Royal Mail First Class is now £2.50.

While this may benefit some, we do apologise to others who will be adversely affected.

Wooden floors, they look amazing don’t they? I know most of you reading this now will have them somewhere in your homes, so do I, and I love it, but there is one problem, aside from things being dropped on it, is that it’s surface friction isn’t great when it comes in to contact with soft fibres, like socks, and, more importantly for the purpose of this post, rugs.

While kids love skidding about on wooden floors in their socks ( to be fair, so do I, even now at 29 ), people stood on rugs don’t, I don’t think at anytime while sliding on a rug, i’ve thought “hey, I feel like Aladdin!”.

We always love to go on about the versatility of our non slip fabric, it’s grippy, it’s cushiony…. you get the idea, it’s a great material to have around the house, and is extremely effective as rug underlay, so that once, albeit beautiful, but slippy rug, is now just a beautiful rug, and you can enjoy the feel of it under your feet without the fear that you may be going floor surfing.

Tenura non slip fabric offers a durable and effective to solution to the slipping rug problem as non slip rug underlay, just lay it down, throw your rug over the top and it will stay firm.

Right now, our non slip fabric has 25% off the RRP, making it even more cost effective to use as non slip rug underlay.

Tenura non slip fabric

We came back to work yesterday, ready for an exciting year ahead of us, after reflecting on the progression we made last year.

We had already got the wheels in motion this year with plenty of planning last year, and in a couple of months, the fruits of our labour will start to be revealed. Some have already begun to arrive in the office, which is of course extremely exciting.

Innovating daily living aids and improving our products is something we plan to achieve in steps, and we are taking an even bigger leap towards achieving our goal this year, by getting down to the core of Tenura daily living aids, by firstly once again refining the material we manufacture them from.

We have already done this once, last year we improved the material by increasing it’s grip, and it’s non toxic properties even further than what our original material already was. We will have more information on this when we have a specific date in which all will be revealed. We will also be running a promotion on our old stock when the new material arrives, so get saving people!

We also have new products ready to be unleashed, and after a full year of research and planning, we feel we can add to the current line with some products which will only increase the versatility of our daily living aids range. We have a backlog of ideas for products that we will continue to research and develop until we deem them worthy to present to you. ( or not, as has sometimes been the case )

We will be visiting and exhibiting at many exhibitions this year, and not just in the UK either. After spreading Tenura out to the US and France last year, we have many more countries where you may find Tenura being stocked this year, but more news to follow on that!
We will also be compiling a list of places where you can see us or where we will be seeing you as soon as we can!

I’ll finish this post with that old cliche….. watch this space.

Another year has come and gone, yet for us here at Tenura, we can look back on it with some pride. Our first full year has gone exceptionally well if we do say so ourselves, and with big plans for the beginning of the year, 2013 is only going to get better.

It still feels a bit strange that were in 2012….

At 5pm today, we will be finishing work for the year, downing tools so to speak, and will be returning in the New Year at 8.30am on the 2nd of January.

The website will still be accepting orders, however please note that any orders made after 12.00pm on the 21st will not be sent out until the 2nd of January at the earliest, so please get those orders in if you need them for Christmas!!

For those who may miss out though, all is not lost, as we are offering a 15% discount throughout the Festive period, just enter the code ‘FESTIVE15′ during checkout to get your discount.
It starts today! and will continue until the end of play on the 2nd of January, an extra day to grab yourself some Tenura bargains.

From all of us at Tenura, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.