Which trade you need
The difference between a seating manufacturer and a re-upholstery workshop
The banquettes down your wall were built by a manufacturer once, probably off site and to a drawing. Putting them right is a different trade, and that is the one this workshop is in. Two kinds of business work on commercial banquette seating in Melbourne. One is a manufacturer, a factory set up to build new seating and deliver it to site. The other is an upholstery workshop that rebuilds and recovers the seating already fixed to the wall. Dylberry Design is the second kind. We are a commercial re-upholstery workshop, rebuilding and recovering banquette seating that is already installed in Melbourne venues rather than manufacturing new runs. We do build new when a venue needs it, but the workshop is set up to strip, rebuild and recover seating that is already installed.
A manufacturer works from a drawing and produces a run, and that is the right call in a few clear situations. New makes sense on a new site, after a layout change, where the framing has gone soft from water, rot or borer rather than ordinary wear, or where the shape you want cannot be reached by recovering what is there. There is nothing wrong with new seating when the job genuinely calls for it, and we will tell you when it does.
The re-upholstery route starts with what is already fixed to the wall. The seating is stripped back to the frame, the timber and webbing are checked, 9-way hand-tied springs are retied where the piece has them, and anything that has moved gets repaired before a cover goes anywhere near it. Then it is rebuilt with Dunlop HR35 high-resilience foam and recovered in commercial-grade vinyl or a contract fabric. Fire-grade foam is standard on venue work, not an extra you have to ask for.
The practical difference for a trading venue is downtime. New seating arrives when the factory is ready and the room is out of use while it goes in. A rebuild is staged around your service instead, with the pattern taken on site, the sewing done at the Eltham North workshop and the fitting done in the quiet hours between sittings.
If you are not sure which of the two you need, send a photo of the worst section. A sound frame under a tired cover is a recover and a foam rebuild, and a frame that has moved is a repair first, then a recover. Our guide to rebuilding or replacing venue seating sets out how to check which one you are looking at. Some venue jobs genuinely do need the seating made again, and we would rather say so than quote around it. Quotes are free, with an answer back inside 24 hours.
- Manufacturer: new frames, new foam, new cover, built off site, delivered and installed
- Workshop: your frames kept, webbing or springs re-tensioned, new foam, new cover, fitted in place
- The frame and the fitting are the only real differences, which is why the two quotes rarely compare line for line
- Foam is new on either route, Dunlop HR35 high-resilience with its own 10-year Dunlop warranty, fire-grade as standard on venue seating
- Where the frames are sound, the workshop route is normally the quicker and less disruptive one for a trading room
