About Anything Left-Handed

Summary

We are a group of left-handed people providing products and information to make life a bit easier for left-handers around the world and campaigning to promote awareness, acceptance and empathy for left-handers.

Anything Left-Handed was the first specialist left-handed business in the world and had a left-handed shop in central London from 1968 to 2006. Our mail order operation in Belmont, Surrey supplies our wide range of products to individuals and businesses around the world and we have made our products available on the Internet since 1999.

We also run the Left-Handers Club, a free association of left-handers worldwide. We publish newsletters for members and act as a forum for their views and a focus for taking action where needed.

Our people

Lauren	Keith and Lauren Milsom have owned and managed the business for the past 20 years and for 10 years before that Keith's father was actively involved in the business. They are both left-handed and have a 17-year old left-handed son and a right-handed 12-year old daughter.	Keith
	This cartoon picture of Keith was done by left-handed son Tom from the picture above. If you want one of these done of you to use on MSN / forums / websites, visit www.tommilsom.com and checkout his shop section
PP Danielle	Danielle is in charge of Customer Services and deals with your phone calls, faxes, letters and emails. Andrew runs our warehouse and despatch operations, making sure that we have sufficient stocks and that your order is despatched quickly and accurately. They are widely experienced in the advantages and challenges of being left-handed and can answer any questions you may have as well as advising on left-handed products for yourself or as gifts for others. We also have a team of part-time helpers in the warehouse, including Keith's mum Shirley who has been involved in the business in various ways for over 20 years.

Offices and warehouse

We have our offices and warehouse in the same building in Belmont, Surrey, England, about 15 miles from our shop in Central London. We have recently taken on more space to expand our warehouse and made a major investment in computer mail order systems to help us deal with your orders more effectively and to integrate all of our systems with our Web site operations.

Map for our Belmont office

Company history

		The company was originally founded by a right-hander who had a lot of left-handed friends and wanted to help them find specialist products (there weren't many around at the time). The original left-handed shop opened in 1968 at 65 Beak Street, at the bottom of Carnaby Street, Soho, in London's West End. In addition to the shop, the premises were used for sending out catalogues and mail order parcels as well as being a general meeting place for local left-handers.
		We moved to a brand new shop about 200 yards away at 57 Brewer Street in 1991. We liked the old black and white colour scheme from Beak Street so we painted the new shop in the same colours. At the same time, we separated the mail order and administration from the shop and moved it to Keith and Lauren's house in Surrey (the mail order warehouse was in the garage and the office in a bedroom extension above!). (this shop closed in May 2006 and we no longer have any shop premises, with all sales now being through this web site)
		In 1994 we rented premises in Belmont, Surrey and moved the warehouse and offices to the new space, purchasing new storage racking and building a large packing bench and installing a new networked computer system.
		In February 2001 we doubled the amount of space available, moved and re-fitted the warehouse and purchased a new Windows 2000-based network. We installed new CAT-5 cabling through the whole building to link the 10 PCs to our main server and allow instant communication between the various parts of the business. In June, we installed a new digital phone system to provide better facilities for our customers and to link directly with the computer mail order systems to make customer details available when you call and save you time giving historic information about any outstanding issues.
		Our web site underwent a major redesign and a massive increase in content during 2004 and was re-launched in September 2004 to an excellent response from visitors. We have an ongoing programme to expand the web site, keep it current and make it the best resource in the world for left-handed information and products - we hope you like it!
		In May 2006 we closed our London shop to focus on our web site and Left-Handers Club. We will continue to develop the content and product range and add new functionality to our website to make it the biggest and best resource for left-handers worldwide.

Legal and technical

Anything Left-Handed Limited is a limited company number 937338
registered in England on 16 August 1968.

Registered office is Sterling House, 18 Avenue Road, Belmont, Surrey, SM2 6JD

VAT registration number is 238 5389 30

The directors of the company are Keith and Lauren Milsom

We are registered with the UK Data Protection Registrar, number for 2003 Z597937X
You can see our entry in the register here

If you would rather search their database yourself, use the form here (you will need to leave the hyphen out of our company name in your search)

In the media

A big part of our promotion and campaigning is to raise awareness and interest in left-handedness in the media. Lauren's background in Public Relations helps and we have had a very good response from all sorts of media around the world. Have a look at our page of news stories about Anything Left-Handed to see what people are saying about us.

Customer comments

One of the reasons we love this business is that we feel we are really helping people make a small difference in their lives and a great many people write to us with kind comments about us and our operations. A lot of our new customers come to us based on recommendations from family or friends and we hope you will be able to recommend us to others as well.

We would be very interested in your comments, especially if there is something that you don't like or think could be improved! Click here to email us

These are a few of the comments we have received recently. Thank you to these an all our other satisfied customers who have taken the trouble to write to us.

• "I am very pleased with the fountain pen which has already improved my 13 year old daughter's handwriting. I only wish I had discovered you years before."
  J Trafford (A happy parent)
• "...I was so pleased and told lots of other people about the fantastic service you gave me!
  Hannah Forbes
• ".. we are both very satisfied with the goods supplied and the speed of delivery. We will be using your company again as our daughter progresses through school"
  D Reed
  
• "I would just like to thank you for the courteous and helpful way in which you dealt with my problem. It is a pleasure to deal with a firm like yours..."
  Susan Burrow

We like to hear about it when we get things right, and it is even more important to us to know when we have got something wrong, so that we can put it right for you, like Mrs Burrow.

See more customer comments about Anything Left-handed

Contact us