Our Story

The company was originally set up in 1978 as — Vinylmaster (Manchester) — and initially specialised in doing repairs to damaged vinyl covers and carrying out re-upholstery work.

The repair work involved re-welding and colour matching of cuts and small tears in vinyl covers to produce an invisible repair. The invisible repairs work was of particular interest to dentists, since stiletto heels and belt buckles are frequently the cause of puncture holes in dental chair seat cushions.

Vinylmaster could do an invisible repair to the damage before it got much worse, unfortunately, the rising costs of doing the invisible repairs eventually forced the company to abandon this work and instead to concentrate efforts on offering a re-upholstery service to the dental profession.

The decision proved very successful and work flowed in as our reputation for top quality workmanship and fair pricing spread among dentists and equipment suppliers. Working and talking to dentists and suppliers over the years also gave us invaluable insights into some of their requirements and — one we did identify where we could help — was to provide a quality basic Dental Stool.

Tom Marsden, one of the company founders, had spent twenty years in Electronic and Instrumentation manufacturing, and was confident the task was simple compared to earlier instrumentation projects. The result was our DS1 Dental Stool.

Ron Peters, the Northwest Manager of Castellini, took a prototype DS1 for evaluation in March 1983 and shortly afterwards gave us our first order — for 100 stools. The stool has proved extremely popular, and thousands of stools from our DS range are now in use in dental practices and hospitals throughout the UK.

Over the years the design has been upgraded, and we are now supplying our DS5 model. In 2003 the company name was changed to Vinylmasters Ltd. This was due to encouragement by favourable government legislation. In our close dealings with practising dentists, we realised (as every dentist’s does) that dentistry has an occupational hazard – namely Bad Back pains.  Due to postural problems that arise after many years leaning forward to carry out work. This led to our producing our MDP stool — as follows.

We were doing re-upholstery work for a young associate dentist in Manchester who was complaining of back pain. After discussing his issue, he agreed to work with us in helping to design a new dental stool. Also at the same time, a friend who had severe back issues due to lifting heavy weights, also agreed to help test out our ideas. The finished result was our MDP stool, a product that we are particularly proud of, and we believe has a back support that is superior to any other dental stool available — regardless of cost.

1995 was the year we introduced our DSW range. This came about after we were approached by Takara Belmont (UK) Ltd. At the time, Belmont were importing dental stools from Japan, but the high cost made them unsaleable. Belmont was looking for a dental stool with a similar specification at a competitive price. Vinylmaster came up with a solution, and the result was the Belmont IC range of dental stools that are now in use in thousands of dental surgeries and hospitals.

The quality of Vinylmaster dental stools speaks for itself. We frequently have stools brought to us for re-upholstering that were sent out over twenty years ago. We received a stool that we identified had been despatched 24 years ago; the vinyl covers were of course the worse for wear, but the foam was still in good condition. Testimony to our careful selection of the variety of foams that we choose to make up our products and our craftsmanship.

Vinylmaster never use cold cure foams that other manufacturers use to cut costs Vinylmaster has now been providing a service to the dental industry for over 30 years, and we still listen to what our customers require. Listening to our customers is the reason for our success.

Tom Marsden resigned from the company on 1 December 2021 after he’s hard work and dedication since 1978 and will be dearly missed. Stewart Hall who is now one of two company directors has over 18 years of experience in manufacturing dental stools & reupholstering dental chairs. Leejay Hall, Stewart's son, now 26 years of age, is a company director running the business with his father.