Suffolk firm wins regional innovation award, now aims for national recognition!

SMART Garden Rooms, Offices & Studios, the Suffolk-based leading manufacturer of quality outdoor buildings has been confirmed as the regional winner of a prestigious British Chambers of Commerce award.

SMART successfully fought off stiff competition to scoop The Problem Solver Business Diversification Award for its investment in a fully immersive Augmented Reality configurator.

The annual award goes to a “business that has transformed the market that they operate in or their product or service in order to gain a strong position in their market.”

SMART launched the configurator, which allows customers to remotely design their own bespoke garden buildings, in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their business as they had to shut their marketing suite at their Thurston headquarters.

This innovation meant that SMART was the first – and remains the only – UK manufacturer and garden room supplier to offer this service.

Matt Moss, SMART’s chief executive, explained: “SMART’s whole ethos is to provide a totally customer-centric service. That was why, in spite of the economic downturn triggered by the various lockdowns in 2020/21, we decided to take an educated risk and invest in the configurator.

“This has given our customers much more freedom in narrowing down the precise features of their SMART garden building and has locked in for us a key competitive advantage over our rivals.”

Paul Sheppard, the company’s managing director, added: “We’re all so chuffed with this recognition. We hope that it will allow us to explain all the other customer-focussed changes we have made over the last few years, including our new range of buildings and how we embed net zero outcomes into every part of the product sourcing, manufacturing and installation processes.”

Having won the reginal heat, SMART has now been entered into the national version of the same category, the winners of which will be announced at a ceremony to be later in October.

Our amazing SMART team with the regional award.