Our customer research has found that heavy umbrella bases – concrete, steel, stone – are not always the answer to securing umbrellas in a residential, commercial or recreational setting.

Here are some of our market discoveries from those who are fed up with the weight:

• Customers with a garden or courtyard, deck, pool or terrace don’t want to move heavy bases, don’t always have the space for them and they don’t want them damaging, scratching, chipping or staining the lovely ground surface, whether it’s grass, stone, wood or tiles. And sometimes they don’t even want their umbrella pole to touch the ground.
• Hardware shop attendants confided to us that older customers have trouble with the weight of heavy bases – “may require help to carry” warns the website of one supplier. So, trolleys to the rescue to get it into their car, but what about when they get it home, who picks it up then?
And if you choose to have it delivered – weight costs!
• Customers with a balcony say they have no space for these big bases – and their small tables can’t even fit the big base under them. And if they did have the space they don’t want the risk of the base scratching, chipping or leaving rusts stains on their balcony surface, particularly if they’re renting.
• Café owners are fed up with the risk to the health and safety to their staff and themselves carrying the big bases in and out of their café each day, and the concern that the bases take up so much space, often the loss of space for a whole table and say four covers. And customers have to step around the bases, as they’re often in the way.
• Picknickers, campers, travellers, tourists want to create shade on the move at picnic tables in local parks, on the side of the road, in camp sites, national parks – they’ve got a lovely portable umbrella, but no way to secure it to a table with a perfect umbrella hole just waiting for a little grippa!